(Bioarchaeology and Social Theory) Pamela K. Stone (Eds.)- Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies_ New Ways of Knowing Anatomical and Archaeological Skeletal Collections-Springer International Publishi

Bioarchaeology and Social Theory
Series Editor: Debra L. Martin
Pamela K. Stone Editor
Bioarchaeological
Analyses and
Bodies
New Ways of Knowing Anatomical and
Archaeological Skeletal Collections
Series editor
Debra L. Martin
Professor of Anthropology
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Las Vegas, NV, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11976
Pamela K. Stone
Editor
Bioarchaeological
Analyses and Bodies
New Ways of Knowing Anatomical
and Archaeological Skeletal Collections
Editor
Pamela K. Stone
School of Critical Social Inquiry
Hampshire College
Amherst, MA, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-71113-3 ISBN 978-3-319-71114-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71114-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962329
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

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This volume is dedicated to new ways of
understanding the experiences of the
individuals who have given their lives so that
we may explore the mosaic of human
difference and resiliency in the past, present,
and future.
Foreword
There is nothing bioarchaeology-as-usual with this edited volume, the 11th to come
out in the series Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. The authors were tasked with
doing some heavy self-reflection and translational work regarding the construction
of knowledge in the area of skeletal analysis not only in archaeological remains but
also from medical skeletonized remains. Authors grappled with how scientific and
medical skeletal collections were collected in the first place and how knowledge
regarding studies of those collections was circulated, utilized, and reproduced.
These chapters question the methods and underlying assumptions about how it even
came to be that early biological anthropologists, physicians, and others studied the
bones in the most decontextualized manner possible. The metaphor itself of “read-
ing” bones as “texts” that then reveal “scientific knowledge” is cross-examined. The
authors bring in social theory from the start of their projects to help guide them in
critically thinking through the assumptions and implications of research with bone
collections of all types, both here and in Europe.
In 2014, Paul Farmer characterized medical anthropology as moving ever more
toward critical approaches. In the blog, SavageMinds.Org, he wrote “That to me is
real critical anthropology: It understands political economy, it understands how
power works, it understands how embodiment happens … it understands all those
things, and is sophisticated in a way that could not have happened without many of
the tools that are unconventional in today’s anthropology.” This captures where
modern bioarchaeological scholarship is heading – toward the building of a critical
bioarchaeology. To get there, we have to have books such as this one that take the
plunge and go where bioarchaeologists have not gone before with questioning the
status quo, framing new questions, and inventing and repurposing new methods. As
well, there are many examples of utilizing sophistical social theory as part of the
process.
There are numerous themes and threads that run throughout these chapters. Each
chapter is a stand-alone study but the studies pick up and expand upon the ideas and
questions raised in all of the chapters. For example, most chapters tackled how sci-
entific information is obtained from the study of skeletal collections. To get at this,
many of the chapters go back in time to reconstruct how collections came to be and
vii
viii Foreword
which individuals were “deemed suitable” for medical or museum collections.

What many of these large skeletal collections represent are disempowered and mar-
ginalized people whose poverty and subjugation made them targets for scientific
study after their death. Each collection has a unique historical trajectory, and the
authors of these papers bring into focus those political-economic and sociocultural
factors that created what is essentially a form of structural violence. Collectors sys-
tematically targeted individuals who had no recourse either while living or after
death to provide informed consent regarding being in a study collection.
Other themes addressed in many of the chapters is the “strangeness” of using
familiar research practices on anatomical collections that are not skeletal collections
in the traditional sense of coming from cemeteries or burial excavations. Because
these collections (e.g., Cobb, Terry, Hamann Todd, Huntington) were studied largely
without any specific historical or contextual information attached to them, they
were used to produce a range of methodological standards and scientific findings.
The detachment of researchers from any knowledge about the individuals who
made up the collection permitted a form of “othering.” The chapters address the
tangled web that is the relationship between the scientist-scholars who study skel-
etal collections (whose publications and stature in the field increase) and the indi-
viduals within these collections (whose identity remains ever more invisible,
unknown, and unacknowledged).
Structural violence as a theme runs throughout most of the chapters in terms of
how it works, how racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of subordination
become normalized through rules, laws, and codes of conduct. The chapters all
illuminate how intersectionality in a study can work, and they model how one would
go about keeping various axes of subordination (race, sex, class, economic disad-
vantage) in the analytical mix as well as exploring agency and resistance.
Debra L. Martin
University of Nevada,
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Contents
1 Introduction�� 1
Pamela K. Stone
Part I Anatomical (Medical) Collections

2 “Whatever Was Once Associated with him, Continues
to Bear his Stamp”: Articulating and Dissecting
George S. Huntington and His Anatomical Collection �� 11
Aja Lans
3 Anatomical Collections as the Anthropological Other:
Some Considerations �� 27
Rachel Watkins
4 More Than the Sum Total of Their Parts: Restoring
Identity by Recombining a Skeletal Collection with Its Texts �� 49
Adam Netzer Zimmer
5 At the Intersections of Race, Poverty, Gender,
and Science: A Museum Mortuary for Twentieth
Century Fetuses and Infants �� 71
Jennifer L. Muller and Margaret S. Butler
6 Recovering the Lived Body from Bodies of Evidence:
Interrogation of Diagnostic Criteria and Parameters
for Disease Ecology Reconstructed from Skeletons
Within Anatomical and Medical Anatomical Collections�� 89
Molly K. Zuckerman
ix
x Contents
Part II Archaeological Collections

7 Lives Lost: What Burial Vault Studies Reveal
About Eighteenth-Century Identities�� 111
Douglas W. Owsley, Karin S. Bruwelheide, Kathryn G. Barca,
Susan K. Reidy, and Raquel E. Fleskes
8 ‘A Mass of Crooked Alphabets’: The Construction
and Othering of Working Class Bodies in Industrial England�� 147
Rebecca Gowland
9 From Womb to Tomb? Disrupting the Narrative
of the Reproductive Female Body�� 165
Pamela K. Stone
10 Mother, Laborer, Captive, and Leader: Reassessing
the Various Roles that Females Held Among
the Ancestral Pueblo in the American Southwest�� 191
Ryan Harrod and Pamela K. Stone
11 A Skull’s Tale: From Middle Bronze Age Subject
to Teaching Collection “Object”�� 213
Madison Long and Alexis T. Boutin
12 Conclusion: Challenging the Narrative�� 231
Kenneth C. Nystrom
Index�� 243
Contributors
Kathryn G. Barca Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural

History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA
Alexis T. Boutin Department of Anthropology, Sonoma State University, Rohnert
Park, CA, USA
Karin S. Bruwelheide Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural
Margaret S. Butler Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston,
IL, USA
Raquel E. Fleskes Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Rebecca Gowland Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK
Ryan Harrod Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska-Anchorage,
Anchorage, AK, USA
Aja Lans Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
Madison Long Department of Anthropology, East Carolina University, Greenville,
NC, USA
Jennifer L. Muller Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
Kenneth C. Nystrom Department of Anthropology, State University of New York
at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA
Douglas W. Owsley Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural
Susan K. Reidy Darnall’s Chance House Museum, Upper Marlboro, MD, USA
Pamela K. Stone School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College, Amherst,
MA, USA
xi
xii Contributors
Rachel Watkins Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington,

DC, USA
Adam Netzer Zimmer Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts-
Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
Molly K. Zuckerman Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures,
Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, USA
About the Editor
Pamela K. Stone is the director of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research-

Hampshire College, Culture, Brain, and Development Program, and a senior faculty
associate in the School of Critical Social Inquiry at Hampshire College, in Amherst,
MA. She received her BA from Hampshire College (1990) and her MA (1995) and
PhD (2000) from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She would characterize
herself as a broadly trained biocultural bioarchaeologist. She began her anthropo-
logical career exploring evolutionary anthropology and participating in research at
Koobi Fora, Kenya. She then shifted to examining the ethics of skeletal analysis in
the wake of the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection legislation.
She has worked at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
in the Department of Anthropology and in the American Museum of Natural History.
Her graduate research has included work on mortuary sites on the Arabian Peninsula,
focusing on arid lands, paleopathology, and world-systems analysis. Her PhD on
paleoobstetrics explored questions of interpretations and cultural bias in reading
females in the past. Within this focus she examined skeletal remains from the
American Southwest to consider the complex roles that women played in the past,
beyond reproduction. She now focuses her work on understanding how biology is
negotiated by culture at birth and how life histories are explored through biology in
death, offering ways to consider how culture narrates these stories. This type of
research has shaped much of her work as she aims to illuminate patterns of morbid-
ity and mortality for people on the margins through biological, cultural, and ethno-
graphic information. She has applied her skeletal analysis skills to help in forensic
investigations and is a qualified expert witness. Her current work grapples with the
ethical questions in the biological sciences and anthropological inquiry, with a par-
ticular focus on how inequality impacts women, children, and indigenous
communities.
xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction
Pamela K. Stone
Contents
ew Ways of Knowing
N 2
Why a Bioarchaeology Lens? 4
Themes of the Text 6
References 7
How do we know what we know when we work with human remains? Where has
our knowledge come from when we look at a humerus (upper arm bone) and deter-
mine that the person ground corn or was nursed back to health after breaking an
arm? How do we know what the landmarks on the pelvis reveal about sex? How do
we take these data and weave a story about that person, about their role in society,
and about cultural, social, and family practices in a time we may not have any writ-
ten documentation about? Who are the people whose bodies allow us to learn and
understand how sickness, wellness, occupation, reproduction, trauma, and social
experiences affect the skeleton? Who were the collectors and researchers who
amassed the collections we use to assess the skeletal transcript and what were their
intentions? Finally, what has influenced our understanding of the skeletal transcript,
and how can we reimagine our interpretations to more fully understand life experi-
ences in times we cannot know except for the human and cultural remains left
behind?
The chapters in this book think through these questions by exploring multiple
lines of inquiry to understand the collection, curation, and analysis of human
remains in both anatomical and archaeological samples. The first set of chapters
focuses on anatomical (medical) skeletal collections and grapples with the complex
ways in which documented skeletal remains were collected. Questions explored by
the researchers include who has been collected, what is documented, how are col-
lections now curated, and who has access to the documentation and the remains?
The bioarchaeologists here examine how data generated from these collections have
been used to build the foundations of skeletal analysis today. Their research offers
P.K. Stone (*)

School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA
e-mail: pstone@hampshire.edu
© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

P.K. Stone (ed.), Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies, Bioarchaeology
and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71114-0_1
2 P.K. Stone
new lenses through which anatomical collections can, and should, be viewed. The
second set of chapters focuses on the analysis of archaeologically recovered skeletal
samples. The researchers here present the ways in which bioarchaeological analysis
can be used to untangle assumptions about sociopolitical relationships and offer
new ways to examine data derived by combining biological (skeletal) remains and
material culture. The researchers consider the ways in which their own assumptions
as well as historic sociocultural assumptions have to be suspended as they (re)exam-
ine biological and material remains to allow for more nuanced interpretations that
can be framed within temporally considered cultural contexts.
All the research in this text reflects bioarchaeological methods that reevaluate
and rethink how we know what we know about the past. The researchers question
the ways in which knowledge has been generated and how the collections we rely
on have their own stories to tell. For example, Long and Boutin (Chap. 11) incorpo-
rate oral histories of the collection process in which a single skull transitioned from
ancient human subject to modern-day teaching collection object. Other examples
include research that invigorates females by unveiling their status as more than
mothers; other research reframes the ways in which the embodiment of “othering”
is not an innate biological consequence but a practice tied to institutional structural
violence. Inquiries such as these remind us that bioarchaeological analyses of the
skeleton and of mortuary frameworks must include consideration of the ways in
which the collections themselves tell a story. This inclusion offers new ways of
knowing what the empirical data can reveal when framed within social theory.
New Ways of Knowing
Understanding the complex pathways that have led us to know how to read the
human skeleton over the last two centuries requires new ways of considering how
knowledge is generated and how this knowledge is imbued with sociopolitical agen-
das. While a number of texts have considered the roles of skeletal collections in
scientific analysis, they do not focus on the biohistories and identities of individuals
who ended up in well-studied anatomical collections. For example, recent anthropo-
logical publications such as Nystrom’s The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and
Autopsy in the United States (2016, this series) consider direct collection and use of
human skeletons for medical inquiry in their cultural and sociopolitical contexts.
Other recent (and more popular) publications, such as Redman’s historical book
Bone Rooms (2016), focus on historical frameworks and consider collections in the
context of race and evolutionary science and describe the competition between
museums in the curation and display of the human form. However, as Zuckerman
(Chap. 6) notes, these collections are uncritically rendered as neutral bodies of evi-
dence. Watkins (Chap. 3) echoes Zuckerman while pushing us to consider the dif-
ferent ways of scientifically knowing and understanding skeletal collections in
terms of social and historical context. She also challenges us to shift away from the
static racializing and “unquestioned positioning of anatomical remains as research
1 Introduction 3
subjects” noting that this form of unquestioned production of scientific knowledge

could be “considered a form of structural violence that we as researchers are perpe-
trating.” The scholarship here pushes the boundaries to explore the histories of ana-
tomical collections and consider the colonial interpretive practices that were used
when these collections were developed and that are continued to be used today.
Long and Boutin (Chap. 11) remind us of the need to incorporate the accounts of
all stakeholders (descendent communities, local historical societies, academic
researchers, museum professionals, cultural resources management archaeologists,
etc.). This inclusion is necessary when interpreting skeletal remains and in under-
standing the shifts that can occur when we think through the ways in which remains
move from “contextualized archaeological subject to decontextualized osteological
object.” By doing this, we can begin to recognize how the past has informed current
interpretations of documented anatomical collections, as well as learn how to read
the bones for what they actually expose about the history of medicine and science.
For example, Zimmer (Chap. 4) interrogates the definitional violence inherent in
collecting human remains by showing how racism and the push for race science
came at the cost of human lives. He reflects on the very clear social divide between
the researchers and the subjects, turning our attention directly to the complex socio-
cultural systems and racialized frameworks that research on human remains has
been forged within. New models, such as Zimmer’s integration of social science
methodologies (including mapping neighborhoods, and examining death records
and indexes, among others) with skeletal analysis, allow us to consider the lived
experiences of individuals. This consideration includes examining the complex
racial issues that led to the inclusion of remains in the Huntington Collection.
New models of inquiry also shape the bioarchaeological research presented on
archaeological collections, moving beyond standard scientific facts and culturally
defined identities. In the larger scholarship, examples of this are reflected in recent
research on sex/gender that reveals a spectrum of sex/gender identities, a mosaic of
biological and cultural frameworks often reflected in non-western cultural contexts,
but made invisible when the lens of western culture is applied. While the history of
bioarchaeological research has had a slow path to situate itself outside the western-
ized binary of male/female, today we see more researchers pushing back against
this binary, arguing that the fluidity of sex/gender may be more visible if we look at
the past through more nuanced lenses (Argawal and Glencross 2011; Butler 2011;
Fasuto-Sterling 2012; Geller 2017). In this same vein, some of the researchers here
offer new ways to consider the skeletal data that entwine gender theory. Three chap-
ters in particular, those by Owsley and colleagues (Chap. 7), Stone (Chap. 9), and
Harrod and Stone (Chap. 10), rethink how females in the past have been scripted
through assumptions by earlier researchers regarding gender roles. This rethinking
assigns agency to females and reminds us to think about the structural violence that
may impact our own interpretations.
By grounding their inquiry in bioarchaeological analysis, the researchers posi-
tion the skeleton at the center and (re)develop methods to consider what is revealed
both in skeletal analysis and in the contextualization of individuals in their mortuary
context. Some researchers reexamine classic sites, as in the case examples from
4 P.K. Stone
Harrod and Stone (Chap. 10) from the American Southwest. Here they use bioar-
chaeological analyses to reveal new interpretations and argue that females were
more than mothers, captives, and slaves. Using ethnographic analogies and skeletal
assessments of occupational stressors and health, they make a compelling argument
that the data on females reveal them as strong, resilient, elite, and even warriors.
Gowland (Chap. 8) intertwines these same lines of inquiry on historic skeletal sam-
ples from Great Britain to offer new ways to consider how children’s skeletal
remains can make visible the structural violence they endured as laborers and how
to tie this violence to cultural practices and social attitudes of the era. Her research
highlights the increased divide between classes during the Industrial Revolution in
Victorian England, one which still exists and puts children at risk even today. As
seen in this research, the engagement of bioarchaeological methods pushes back
against singular interpretations of skeletal analyses, assumptions about identities,
agency, and racism in science and collection, thus disrupting traditional western
ways of knowing.
Why a Bioarchaeology Lens?
As evidenced here, bioarchaeologists are in a unique position to develop rich inter-

pretations of lived experiences, sometimes referred to as biohistories or osteobiog-
raphies, of skeletonized individuals in mortuary contexts.1 As Knudson and
Stojanowski (2008) state, bioarchaeology is a discipline that bridges the biological
and social sciences, contributing to a contextualized and theoretically sophisticated
understanding of social identities. However, this is most often framed as a method
solely for the analysis of “human biological materials from archaeological con-
texts” (Knudson and Stojanowski 2008, 398). I would argue that bioarchaeology
should be more broadly defined, as Spence and White (2009, 233) so eloquently
offer: “…as an interdisciplinary integration of theory and method that uses any kind
of organic remains to test hypotheses related to health, growth and demography;
activities and physical behaviors; and cultural and physical environments.” In this
context, the inclusion of anatomical collections in bioarchaeological analyses is not
only necessary but also supports a more reflexive bioarchaeology.
This text is divided into two parts. The first set of chapters examines some of the
largest and most utilized anatomical collections (Cobb, Huntington, Johns Hopkins,
Terry), offering the mortuary context as the curation in the museum. This research
results in new ways of understanding how past interpretations of the temporal,
regional, and industrial diversity of these collections help to explain how bioarchae-
ology has been shaped by social historical phenomena (Blakey 2001). The second
set of chapters focuses on archaeological skeletal remains and uses the same sets of
1
I am broadening the definition of mortuary context to include the collection and curation of skel-
etal remains as part of anatomical (medical) institutions, as well as the more traditional context of
human remains in the archaeological context.
1 Introduction 5
criteria to reveal new ways to examine skeletal remains in archaeological contexts.

The bioarchaeologists here all use their skills in multiple contexts and consider eth-
ics and methods as well as the humanity inherent in the process of collecting, curat-
ing, and documenting anatomical and archaeological skeletal research collections.
While documented anatomical skeletal collections offer records identifying indi-
viduals, they also serve as the basis for generating basic information regarding the
human skeletal transcript.2 Lans (Chap. 2) considers the individual anatomical skel-
eton of a young African-American woman we come to know as “Lizzie.” Lans uses
her name to remind us of the person behind the bones and develops her story by
reconstructing her life, her illness and death, and how she came to be in the
Huntington Collection. She also analyzes Lizzy’s experiences in life by exploring
the pathological lesions left on her body from Pott’s disease (spinal tuberculosis).
This helps us to more fully understand the complexity of her life as an African-
American woman who would have faced intense stigma and loss of mobility and
constant pain, all of which must have jeopardized her livelihood and left her to die
alone. Through Lans’ analyses, we are reminded that Lizzie’s class and color made
her vulnerable not only in life but in death as well. Lans leaves us remembering that
a more reflexive bioarchaeology can breathe life into the past and allow us to
remember the people whose remains permit us to know what we know about the
human condition. Watkins (Chap. 3) and Muller and Butler (Chap. 5) explore the
structural violence inherent in the ways we think about anatomical collections and
in the processes that resulted in their formation. Watkins interrogates the ways in
which the collection process and subsequent research serves to erase their histories
and further objectify them as “osteological persons.” Muller and Butler consider
how the collection of embryonic, fetal, and infant remains, which was seen as
advancing the science of growth and development, were done so at the expense of
impoverished women and their unborn infants. They discuss how the collectors’
mortuary treatments, such as the processing of fetal remains into skeletons, and
mortuary contexts, such as placing the remains in storage drawers, are more compli-
cated than traditional interment. Their nuanced evaluation of collections such as
these “…add significantly to our understanding of the social identities and values
assigned, in life and in death, to those dissected and collected” and make a strong
case for bioarchaeological assessments of our teaching collections.
Owsley and colleagues (Chap. 7) explore an eighteenth-century subterranean
burial vault in Maryland. They offer exhaustive multifaceted analyses, including
direct skeletal assessments, chemical analyses (stable isotopes, heavy metals, and
mitochondrial DNA), and historical and genealogical research, to reveal how mor-
tuary practices, power dynamics, and gender in Colonial America were more com-
plex than often assumed. Their exhaustive analyses reveal the interdisciplinary
nature of bioarchaeological research. Zuckerman (Chap. 6) offers an intersection of
analyses to explore how anatomical (medical) collections can inform or misinform
2
I am using the term transcript here to capture the ways that life history becomes “written” on the
bones and embedded in morphology. Bioarchaeological training essentially lets scholars read the
bones as if they might be a transcript.
6 P.K. Stone
the analysis of archaeological collections. Her examination of the diagnostic criteria

of acquired syphilis (a chronic infectious condition) mapped on known skeletal
remains can be utilized to assess the unknown. This method reveals compelling data
showing that the skeletal manifestations of syphilis (and other Treponema infec-
tions) are mitigated by the immunological status of the individual. Here she walks
us through the etiology of the disease to reveal that lesions on the skeleton may not
be present, but the disease may be. She also explores how in anatomical collections
the prevalence of syphilitic diagnostic lesions may represent a bias of collection,
and this may in turn bias the analyses of ancient remains. The result is if we assume
that syphilis leaves distinct diagnostic lesions, then the absence of lesions implies
the absence of the illness in a population; but this may not be the case. This research
reflects how these bioarchaeological methods help reevaluate and rethink how we
know what we know about the past, to question the ways in which knowledge has
been generated and to understand how the collections we rely on have their own
stories to tell.
Bioarchaeological inquiries offer new ways of knowing at a time when the need
for reliable knowledge of the conditions that support inequality should be at the
center of scholarship in anthropology. While scientific modes of inquiry are among
the most powerful tools we have for doing this, often the assumption is that science
equals fact, and facts become embedded in our understandings. As Stone argues
(Chap. 9), there is little direct evidence to support the contention that mortality for
reproductive-aged females in the ancient world was solely the result of parturition
even though this is often assumed when assessing demographic profiles. Utilizing
skeletal data and ethnography, she asks us to consider how the cultural assumptions
of males and female made by the interpreters may have influenced the ways in
which they assessed the rise in reproductive-aged deaths for females in the ancient
world. She suggests that the reliance on the cultural construction of the risky birth
narrative, now an assumed fact in biomedicine today, instead of what the data may
reveal about the complex lives of reproductive-aged females in the past may be
creating a false narrative about females in the past. Bioarchaeological research such
as this reminds us to ground our empirical understanding of the human condition in
what the bodies and material culture are telling us, rather than layering our own
understanding of social order on them.
Themes of the Text
There are three central themes in this text. The first theme considers documented
skeletal and anatomical collections curated in museums, medical schools, and other
institutional repositories, asks who was collected and why, and interrogates how
curation and analysis of these collections have been informed (or not) by who these
individuals were during their lifetimes. As these stories unfold, individuals on the
margins, invisible and disposable, are revealed; their lifestyles and experiences can
now be considered.
1 Introduction 7
The second theme reflects on the ways in which the western lens has shaped
interpretations of ancient and unknown skeletal remains. The researchers here work
to untangle and read the body in its temporal and cultural contexts, offering new
understandings of the past by disrupting traditional western ways of knowing the
body. The bioarchaeologists here uncover the ways that interpretations are “…
mutable, multiple, and entangled with sociopolitical circumstances” (Geller 2017,
27) in life and in death. Exposed are more complex understandings of skeletal anal-
ysis that consider the identities of individuals as they lived and died and how they
may have been curated in known and unknown contexts.
The third theme draws heavily on social theories (including but not limited to
gender theory, political-economic frameworks, models for thinking about inequal-
ity, and violence theory) to reconstruct interpretations (past and present) of skeletal
collections. The researchers present multilayered and reflexive inquiries that illumi-
nate the past and reveal the unique position of bioarchaeologists to offer new ways
of knowing.
As Hodder (2003, 56) reminds us, “It is precisely when the past is claimed by
present communities that… the recognition and incorporation of multiple stake-
holder groups, and the self-critical awareness of one’s archaeological truth claims”
need to be understood as historically contingent. This reflexivity is central to the
research conducted by bioarchaeologists, as we challenge binary, antiquated, racist,
and sexist interpretations and bring to the forefront the need for physical anthropol-
ogy (and medicine) to reexamine humans as both biologically and culturally vari-
able; this task is central to bioarchaeological research. The research and analyses
included in this edited text offer both inclusive and reflexive dialogues that invigo-
rate new models and ask us to consider human experiences and place them in larger
spheres of knowledge.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Debra Martin for pushing me to work on this project
and to include it in her series on Social Theory in Bioarchaeology and for her patience with all my
questions. To the Springer Press team for all their work in bringing this to press. To all the research-
ers who have contributed to this text, thank you for your time, for your insights, and for staying
with this project through its ups and downs. To Ellen my wonderful copy editor, who has not only
tightened my writing but also asked some interesting questions helping me to focus my work and
this text. Done is good.
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Butler, J. (2011). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York, NY: Taylor &
Francis.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex/gender: Biology in a social world. New York: Routledge.
8 P.K. Stone
Geller, P. L. (2017). The bioarchaeology of socio-sexual lives: Queering common sense about sex,
gender, and sexuality. Cham: Springer.
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butions to the study of human social identities. Journal of Archaeological Research, 16(4),
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Mesoamerica, 20(02), 233–240.
Part I
Anatomical (Medical) Collections
Chapter 2
“Whatever Was Once Associated with him,
Continues to Bear his Stamp”: Articulating
and Dissecting George S. Huntington
and His Anatomical Collection
Aja Lans
Contents
Introduction 11
The Collection 12
Human Variation 14
Medicine, Dissection, and Bodies: A Necessary Bond 16
Case Study: Lizzie’s Extended Life Course 18
(Re)Articulating Huntington and His Collection 23
References 24
Introduction
The work of bioarchaeologists is typically seen as science based and objective, and
their knowledge of the human skeletal system grants the ability to “read” bones. But
in the practice of analyzing or “reading” the skeleton, both the researcher and the
specimen are changed. As Sofaer (2012, 137) points out, “The interaction between
different kinds of bodies – the living and the dead, the fleshed and the skeletal –
presents different kinds of possibilities and potentials for an inter-corporeal
relationship from those arising between living bodies.” We must therefore consider
how bones exert agency in their relations with the living and what the dead “do” in
different contexts (Novak 2014). In doing so, I argue that bioarchaeologists might
reframe their analyses to produce more inclusive narratives about the people they
study with.
Arguments of this kind have gained traction in recent years (Crossland 2009a;
Sofaer 2006; Novak 2014). These approaches emphasize the materiality of the body
A. Lans (*)
Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
e-mail: amlans@syr.edu

12 A. Lans
and its relational properties. At the same time, many of these scholars challenge us
to critically reflect on the medical field from which our discipline emerged.
For example, postmortem interventions, including dissection, have been long
used to study and objectify the dead. As Sappol (2002) has demonstrated, the devel-
opment of objective medical science throughout the nineteenth century served to
reinforce dichotomous notions of subject/object, living/dead, and inside/outside.
Such dichotomies can be traced to Enlightenment rationality, the Cartesian split
between mind and body, and the notion that nature and culture are in opposition
(Crossland 2009a; Latour 1993; Sofaer 2006). Studying the natural world using
rational scientific methods has come to be considered a privileged means for gain-
ing empirical knowledge. Hence the dead body came to be approached as a natural
object for medical inquiry, particularly the interiors that remained hidden inside.
Because physical anthropology developed from this anatomizing tradition, it is
not surprising to find that bioarchaeologists and forensic anthropologists similarly
trained to “read” the skeletal body and decipher its facts (Crossland 2009b).
However, bodies are historically embedded, and different anatomical and archaeo-
logical postmortem interventions reveal the instability of the corpse (Crossland
2009a; Ion 2015; Sofaer 2006, 2012). Bioarchaeologists study bones from the dead
and objectify bodies in an attempt to recreate the once living, social body. In this
way, the skeleton moves between being both object and subject. Sofaer (2006, 64)
argues, “People can become objects because they are material.” The properties of
the material body influence its social meanings, and these social meanings cannot
be separated from the physical body.
As such, the bones we study are not inert. Rather, the bones themselves have
postmortem lives. Depending on the situation, bones can be interpreted and manipu-
lated in different ways, made to be “material and social, emotional and political”
(Hallam 2010, 468). By understanding and investigating the materiality of the body,
bioarchaeologists may be able to reconfigure the skeletal object body as a subject
body and overcome the divisions that have been created between subjects/objects
and living/dead.
To pursue this form of inquiry, I explore the making of the Huntington Collection.
This large collection of human skeletal remains was developed by New York City
physician, Dr. George Sumner Huntington (1861–1927), at the turn of the twentieth
century. In addition to exploring the historicity of the collection, I want to consider
how medical practitioners—as well as bioarchaeologists like ourselves—engage
with the dead. The identities of both, I argue, are mutually constituted in these inter-
corporeal relationships.
The Collection
During his tenure as Professor of Anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons
in New York City, Dr. Huntington established the Morphological Museum, a massive
comparative collection that occupied four floors of the anatomy building (Fig. 2.1).
2 “Whatever Was Once Associated with him, Continues to Bear his Stamp”… 13
Fig. 2.1 The Morphological Museum. Courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Columbia
University Health Sciences Library
The osteological series of this collection included the remains of over 1000 animals
and somewhere between 7000 and 8000 human skeletons belonging to individuals
who were dissected at the college (Columbia University Health Sciences Library).
Assembled between 1893 and 1921, the social and historical context of when this
collection influenced how and why select individuals were dissected and their bones
kept for study. Professionalization of medicine throughout the nineteenth century
involved dissection becoming a rite of passage for medical students. Familiarity with
the relatively unknown interior of the body allowed doctors to produce knowledge and
gain authority over their patients—both living and dead (Sappol 2002).
Huntington was the first professor to require “systematic and regular dissection of
the human body” at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he emphasized
laboratory classes over lectures on the basis that anatomy could not be taught from a
textbook (McClure 1927, 361) (Fig. 2.2). His goal was to collect 5000 of each bone
in the body to use for studies of human variation (Pearlstein 2015). As Huntington’s
health declined, the Morphological Museum became a burden to the Anatomy
Department at the college. Due to a lack of space and the difficulty of maintaining the
Museum, various parts of the collection were traded and gifted to other institutions
over many years, including the Army Medical Museum (present- day National
Museum of Health and Medicine). The human skeletons that remained eventually
came to reside at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH)
in Washington, DC.
14 A. Lans
Fig. 2.2 The dissection room at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Courtesy of Archives &
Special Collections, Columbia University Health Sciences Library
The Huntington Collection is now described as representing over 3600 European

immigrants and New York City residents, most of known age, sex, nationality, and
cause of death. Their ages at death range from 15 to 96, with birth years ranging
from 1798 to 1901. Forty-three percent of the collection is classified as native-born
Americans and further categorized as white or black, 52% is comprised of immi-
grants, and the rest are of unknown origin. About 73% of the individuals are listed
as male, while only 27% are female. Until recently most researchers have main-
tained the anonymity of these remains while using them for research that might
improve the methodology of forensic anthropology (Jantz and Jantz 1999; Mulhern
and Jones 2005; Smith 1996). While these studies have certainly produced impor-
tant insights, the historical context of the collection remains largely undervalued,
and the life stories of the individuals within it less than fully unexplored.
Human Variation
Dr. Huntington was a regular at von Glahn’s Restaurant and Saloon, an establish-
ment located not far from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. One day he
ordered rabbit stew and was shocked to discover a cat’s vertebra while eating.
According to The Physicians and Surgeons Quarterly (1968), “It is said that he
never returned to von Glahn’s.” This is just one of the many tales passed down about
Dr. Huntington, emphasizing his anatomical expertise.
It should not be surprising that a man like Huntington became such an

accomplished doctor. He was an eighth-generation descendent of two Puritan families,
the Sumners and the Huntingtons, who both immigrated to Massachusetts in the
1630s. His ancestors included reverends, teachers, judges, governors, and doctors,
and this ancestry endowed him with “unusual powers of mind and body” which
enabled him to become a pioneer in the field of anatomy in the United States
(McClure 1927, 356).
Huntington received an excellent education, studying in Germany and then
returning to the United States to attend Trinity College in Massachusetts. He studied
Latin, Greek, French, English, and German language and took courses in mathemat-
ics, moral philosophy, political science, chemistry, and zoology. It seems that
Huntington was a true Renaissance man, but eventually “natural science made a
deep impression on his receptive mind, and that the influence there led him to a
scientific career” (McClure 1927, 359). At the age of 23, Huntington became a
medical doctor, graduating second in his class from the College of Physicians and
Surgeons in New York City.
After completing his studies, Huntington worked at Roosevelt Hospital in the
city. In 1889, he became the first full professor of anatomy in the country at his
alma mater, where he stayed until poor health forced him to retire in 1924. Prior
to the work of anatomists like Huntington, anatomy was simply considered a
“handmaid to medicine and surgery” (Detwiler 1930, 1). Huntington wanted to
revolutionize the field of medicine to meet what he saw as the high standards of
European methods and traditions, and he pioneered the use of the morphological
method, or comparative anatomy, in the United States. Using this method, the struc-
ture of the human body was compared to that of lower vertebrates (Hrdlička 1937;
McClure 1927).
Huntington first met Aleš Hrdlička in 1887. At the time, Hrdlička was a member
of the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals studying anatomical
variation among the “abnormal,” which included “the insane, the criminals, the epi-
leptics, the idiots, etc.” (Hrdlička 1897, 5). This required a skeleton collection con-
taining “abnormal” people with known health histories. Hrdlička (1937, 245) was
“let loose on the then precious, tagged, but otherwise unkempt accumulation” of
human bones taken from dissections and stored in the basement of Roosevelt
Hospital. Huntington would go on to teach at the College of Physicians and Surgeons
where he began collecting remains for his morphological collection. According to
Hrdlička (1937), from 1893 on, bones were gathered from all of the bodies dis-
sected at the College except those used for surgical demonstrations. The bones were
labeled with lead tags, boiled in steam-piped vats, and left to dry on the dissecting
tables over summer vacation. In the fall, the bones were put in boxes and taken to
the cellar of the building.
Hrdlička (1937) saw the collection as anthropologically valuable because it con-
tained people of so many different nationalities, and he was instrumental in securing
its transfer to the US National Museum (now the NMNH) when he became curator
of physical anthropology. Over the years Huntington would send bones to Hrdlička
in exchange for other specimens, and in 1914 the two discussed the transfer of the
16 A. Lans
entire collection to the museum. However, the transfer did not occur until 1921.
When the remains arrived, Hrdlička and his team were unable to sort all of the
individuals, resulting in duplicate catalog numbers and commingling of approxi-
mately 26% of the collection (Pearlstein 2015). Unfortunately, catalog cards for the
years of 1911–1915 went missing, making it impossible to sort out these bones.
While the Smithsonian Institution website (2017) describes the collection as
containing 3600 individuals, there are approximately 3070 partial skeletons
(Pearlstein 2015). Many of the remains never made it to the museum, and although
catalog numbers and demographic information were recorded for the individuals,
there were no bones. Despite its incomplete and commingled status, the diversity of
the collection makes it valuable for studies of “human variation and skeletal biology
research” (Smithsonian Institution 2017).
Yet there are many ways these bones can shed light on more than skeletal
“human variation.” Indeed, I see these remains as representing individuals who
each lived and died under particular, quite variable circumstances. The diversity of
the collection and the demographic information can inform us on how different
people navigated a rapidly changing metropolis and how they literally embodied
their experiences. Additionally, we should not only consider the remains of the
individuals present but also of those who have gone missing over the years, but are
documented as having once been part of the collection (Watkins and Muller 2015).
Thus, the physical remains should not necessarily be privileged over what can be
learned from archival research. As bioarchaeologists, we can begin forming more
inclusive narratives by considering the contexts in which the people we study with
were collected using multiple media and material forms. By closely following the
motives and practices of those who came in contact with these remains, we might
also better understand the mutual transformations involved in these bodily
interactions.
Medicine, Dissection, and Bodies: A Necessary Bond
Medical education expanded rapidly throughout the 1800s, raising fears that the
quality of training would suffer (Halperin 2007; Sappol 2002). By laying claim to
the knowledge of bodily interior, physicians would reestablish their authority
through the act of dissection. Dissection, moreover, would become a rite of passage
for those students attempting to enter the medical guild (Sappol 2002). But dissec-
tion required dead bodies. In 1854, New York passed what was commonly referred
to as the “Bone Bill,” the “Act to promote medical science and protect burial
grounds” (Sappol 2002). This bill gave the bodies of the unclaimed and poor
to medical schools and was justified by the idea that the poor could repay their
debt to society by being dissected for the sake of education and scientific progress.
The Bone Bill was meant to curb grave robbing, which had become a fairly common
and lucrative practice throughout the country (Halperin 2007; Sappol 2002). The Bill
largely served to appease the predominately white middle class and assure them
that the bodies of their loved ones would not be subject to dissection. It also
appeased members of the medical field, who lobbied for a regular supply of bodies
so respectable anatomists could train the next-generation physicians and surgeons
(Sappol 2002).
Dissection has long been considered a stigmatizing practice and in some cases a
form of posthumous punishment (Nystrom 2014; Sappol 2002). According to Sappol
(2002, 131) at the time of the Bone Bill’s passage, opponents argued the act was an
“illegitimate exercise of class privilege.” This is reflected in the demographics of the
Huntington Collection, with over 40% of the individuals coming from public institu-
tions, including poor houses and asylums on Blackwell and Ward’s islands (Muller
et al. 2017; Pearlstein 2015). Additionally, over half of the collection is made up of
immigrants, who were likely poor and had attenuated social networks. As Komar and
Grivas (2008) point out, these types of sampling biases should lead us to view such
collections as a “manufactured population.”
This manufacturing began with the dissection process, which, according to Hodge
et al. (2017), reified social status and could create or destroy personhood. The disar-
ticulation of bodies and their social identities constructed “idealized anatomical ‘sub-
jects’” (Hodge et al. 2017, 125). Huntington (1898) referred to the body as a machine
and argued that the only way students could understand “humans” was through the
use of “objects,” which included the corpses of once living people and animals.
Though this attitude clearly suggests “medical detachment” and the objectification of
his subjects, Huntington, nonetheless, would form a relationship with these various
things (Crossland 2009a). His relationship with them would, moreover, be transfor-
mative—altering both the “maker” and the “made.”
While Huntington is touted as a great man who worked upon objectified bodies,
at the same time he could not have become this “person” without the corpses he
dissected and use in his teaching. Biographies of Huntington by his former students
emphasize his demonstrative teaching style and his pioneering work in the field of
comparative anatomy (Hrdlička 1937; McClure 1928). What is not addressed is
how Huntington was shaped by his work and his interactions with these dead people
and animals. No one discusses Huntington’s own rites of passage required to achieve
the status of a medical doctor and expert in his field.
Even though the emphasis at the time was increasingly placed on an “individual”
identity and biography, I argue that Dr. Huntington’s personhood was constructed
through the diverse relationships he formed, especially with the dead (Fowler 2010).
The individuals that are now part of his collection enabled him to teach and be a
professor. They contributed to his research on morphology and variation, establish-
ing him as a pioneering anatomist. And they acted as items for trade when he
exchanged their parts with Hrdlička. Huntington depended on his intimate connec-
tions to the dead. Without them he would not be remembered as a great anatomist,
and there would be no collection to carry on his name or for me to conduct my own
research with.
18 A. Lans
Case Study: Lizzie’s Extended Life Course
To further explore how we might reframe our relationships with this collection, I
turn to the partial skeleton of Lizzie, a 22-year-old African American woman. Lizzie
was labeled 42.5 upon her death and has since been re-catalogued as 318,924 by the
Smithsonian. Using her name rather than referring to her as an anonymous speci-
men is one way to reconstruct her identity and personhood (Novak 2014). Archival
research indicates that Lizzie was born in Virginia but migrated to New York City
where she worked as a domestic for 5 years. She was part of a larger northern migra-
tion of over 20,000 African Americans who left the Jim Crow south in the 1890s to
“live a fuller and freer life” (Hicks 2010, 27). Many of these migrants were women,
and domestic work was one of the few options available to them, although it was
often very exploitative, requiring hard labor for low wages (Hicks 2010; Hunter
1997). An increase in the black population led to racial antagonism, violence, and
patterns of social and residential segregation. “At no point in the history of New York
City,” Osofsky argues, “were Negroes accepted as full American citizens” (1966,
35). Lizzie’s last known home was the Colored Mission, a Quaker organization that
set out to socially elevate black people and provided residence for women (Haverford
Libraries 2016). She died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1898 after a 4-month stay at
Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell Island.
This infectious disease is not uncommon in the Huntington Collection, with 51%
of the individuals in it listed as dying from “tuberculosis” and “phthisis.” Tuberculosis
has, of course, been long studied by bioarchaeologists (Roberts 2011, 2012). An
infectious disease that is most often caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis in
humans, it has been known by many names throughout history, including phthisis
and consumption. Because Robert Koch did not discover the tubercle bacillus until
1882, it is often difficult to obtain accurate records of tuberculosis prior to 1900 due
to the various classifications of the disease (Drolet and Lowell 1952; Dyer 2010).
The most common form of tuberculosis is pulmonary, or infection of the lungs.
Of those infected with the bacteria, only 10% go on to develop the disease (Dyer
2010). If an exposed individual’s immune system is unable to fight off the infection,
it leads to active disease. Tuberculosis also has the potential to leave its mark on
bone, most commonly in the form of Pott’s disease of the vertebral column (Roberts
2012; Roberts and Manchester 2005). Changes to the spine are most often found on
the anterior body of the lower thoracic and upper lumbar vertebrae. The tubercle
bacilli infect the vertebra forming an abscess, which expands, causing osteoporosis
and destruction of the vertebral body (Resnick 2002). The bone loss leads to col-
lapse and kyphosis.
Lizzie’s vertebrae are strung together with twine and labeled with a lead tag. Her
thoracic vertebrae are very poorly preserved, and most of the centra have been
destroyed, probably by overprocessing from boiling. However, there are still traces
of pathology on her bones. Part of the centrum of T9 is present, showing evidence
of collapse and suggestive of Pott’s disease (Fig. 2.3). If she did indeed suffer from
spinal tuberculosis, then her illness would have been visible to others and likely
Fig. 2.3 Lizzie’s vertebrae, exhibiting evidence of Pott’s disease (arrow). Photograph by author
affected her mobility (Roberts 2011). She may have faced social stigma and eventually
been unable to work, perhaps resulting in her residence at the Colored Mission.
This social stigma is seen in the portrait of the “contagious consumptive,” who
was often a menial laborer who was a recent immigrant or African American
(Ott 1996, 101). Black women who worked as domestics were often singled out as
conduits of disease and a threat to the white population. European immigrants were
likewise a threat. Waiters, maids, cooks, and servants could be vectors of disease.
A disease like tuberculosis could jeopardize the already limited employment oppor-
tunities of these marginalized laborers. Other targets of what Ott (1991, 123) refers
to as “tuberculophobia” were poor neighborhoods and tenements in cities. They
were full of immigrants and blacks who had migrated to the cities. As such, these
places—and the people who inhabited them—were visible signs of the changing
social order perceived as a threat to the middle class.
20 A. Lans
Risk factors for exposure and development of the disease include crowding, city
living, poor housing conditions, malnutrition, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse,
immune-suppressive disorders, and migration (Hargreaves et al. 2011). Urban liv-
ing can result in social inequalities in health care and disease exposure, especially
for residents of slums (Downey 2016). During the turn of the twentieth century,
many black New Yorkers were at increased risk due to being recent migrants to the
city and living in crowded, segregated housing—Lizzie included as her last known
address was a home for poor blacks (Drolet and Lowell 1952).
Lizzie’s status as a black woman and migrant employed as a domestic likely
meant she worked for meager wages and lived in inferior housing. If Lizzie was
unable to afford the move north on her own, she might have used an employment
agency to cover the cost (Hicks 2010). These agencies might hold a woman’s
belongings or garnish her wages until she repaid her debt. Domestics performed
arduous tasks such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, and laundry (Hunter 1997).
They were often at the mercy of their employers, who might arbitrarily withhold
wages. Domestics were also at risk for physical harm from employers, including
sexual assault. As a single black woman, Lizzie’s morality was already under scru-
tiny (Hicks 2010). Unable to conform to white society’s ideals for domesticity and
bearing the burden of a history of hypersexualization, black women were often
assumed to be promiscuous.
Race was also thought to play a role in who became infected with tuberculosis,
even after the discovery of the bacillus. Natural immunity and a history of exposure
were thought to explain why some races seemed more susceptible to the disease
(Ott 1996). Jews supposedly had the strongest resistance, while Negroes and
American Indians were the most susceptible. The closer a group was to successful
assimilation into industrial capitalism, the more civilized and, therefore, less sus-
ceptible to the disease they were (Ott 1996). This image of the consumptive, along
with the emphasis on assimilation into predominantly white, middle class society,
served to marginalize particular groups and reinforce the existing social and racial
hierarchies.
Fear of the disease was rampant, and with reason (Ott 1996). The symptoms of
the disease were debilitating, and those with advanced tuberculosis were in constant
pain and unable to work. Symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis include unexplained
weight loss, loss of appetite, night sweats, fever, fatigue or weakness, coughing up
blood, shortness of breath, and chest pain (Dyer 2010). Medical treatments were
equally dire. Institutionalization meant separation from friends and family, as well
as the loss of agency when patients became depersonalized cases. These fears had
an impact on those infected with the disease. Engagements were broken off and
careers were ruined. Disinfection became a new way to fight the disease, and it often
targeted the objects that the infected touched or owned (Ott 1996). Everything a
patient wore or touched was separated out, boiled, sanitized, and in some cases
burned. Extensions of the individual and aspects of personhood were essentially
destroyed. Even the corpses of those who had died of tuberculosis were suspect, and
some physicians argued that they should be cremated (Ott 1996).
However, Lizzie’s unclaimed body was turned over to the College of Physicians
and Surgeons for dissection. But perhaps Huntington did not think it disrespectful
to dissect her corpse. In 1919, 6 years before Huntington’s retirement, correspon-
dence between the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Dr. Symers of the
New York City Morgue indicates the fate of most unclaimed dead (Columbia
University Health Sciences Library). According to Dr. Symers, some 7245
unclaimed bodies passed through the morgue the prior year. He adds that “with the
exception of 715 bodies, which were sent to the schools, everyone was buried in
Potter’s field without the legal right of autopsy or dissection of any description, that
is to say, 6,530 bodies were thus disposed of.”
Dr. Symers proposed introducing a law to a “well-known senator” in Albany but
had to find out if the moment was appropriate to “agitate the matter.” Obviously the
doctor thought there was a right to autopsy or dissection. He makes no distinction
between the two—but at the same time acknowledges that the law might not be
approved for “political reasons” if popular opposition was “too stormy.” The letter
from Dr. Symers was brought to Huntington’s attention, but unfortunately no indi-
cations of his sentiments on the matter have been found. Although this correspon-
dence was exchanged long after Lizzie’s death, it is likely that these sentiments
existed within the medical community for some time. Given the high numbers of
individuals dying of tuberculosis in the collection, it seems that the stigma of the
disease did not deter their dissection.
Intimate engagement with bodies like Lizzie’s would have likely evoked a range
of emotions in the dissector. Although anatomists would have been trained to keep
these reactions under wraps, the process of dissection had the potential to be both
morally and physically dangerous. The corpse, as Sappol (2002, 79) notes, is
uncanny. Exposure to smells, fluids, and contaminants from the body meant the dis-
sector was putting himself at risk. While overcoming such adversity could be seen
as a heroic act, there were tales of doctors contracting diseases from the corpse,
including tuberculosis (Sappol 2002, 79). Because Lizzie had visible signs of this
disease, her remains may have been both desired and feared. Her dissection may
very well have served as a rite of passage for one of Huntington’s students. Perhaps
Huntington himself interrogated her corpse, asserting himself as an expert in his
domain. Rather than simply a detached act of objectification, this process was
work—work that had the potential to transform bodies of both the living and the
dead.
For example, when preparing bodies, like the body of Lizzie, Huntington and his
students were involved in acts that included “separating of flesh from bone, cutting,
sawing, pulling, prying, rubbing, wiping, counting, ordering, perforating, inserting
and tying together of bones…” (Hallam 2010, 480). Dissecting bodies and prepar-
ing their skeletons were labor intensive; it formed a physical and tactile connection
between the scientist and the “remains” (Hallam 2010). Dissection requires physi-
cal contact with the fleshy corpse and intimate knowledge of the inside of the body.
Sofaer (2012, 8) stresses the importance of touch in these relationships, and she
reminds us “Touch is the principal sense through which we assume and express the
parameters of a bodily existence in relation to others.”
22 A. Lans
Hallam (2010) goes on to challenge the notion of medical detachment when

working with dead bodies, both fleshed and unfleshed. She argues that there was not
complete dispassion because preparers wanted to produce “perfect” skeletons
(Hallam 2010, 483). There was emotion involved and the fear of breaking bones.
Preparing skeletons formed an emotional connection between the scientist and sup-
posed object. According to Robb (2013, 447) “it is possible to exert a social pres-
ence without maintaining the biological processes of life…” Even if these bodies
and skeletons are supposedly lifeless objects, they have agency. This can be extended
into Huntington’s work preparing soft parts for preservation and for processing
bones. Huntington was devoted to preparing an anatomical collection and even
established the Morphological Museum at the College of Physicians and Surgeons
to store his preparations.
Like Huntington and his students before, I too am changed by my engagement
with Lizzie’s remains. I handle her body as an object in hopes of knowing her as a
person. I touch Lizzie’s bones and look at the evidence of tuberculosis in hopes of
understanding what her everyday life might have been like. I lament her crumbling
vertebrae and wish I could see and feel her entire spine. I study her pelvis to confirm
what I have been taught about female morphology. I notice the scars of epiphyseal
fusion that are just barely visible on her scapula and pelvis, and I am reminded of
how young she was when she died. We are similar in age.
I struggle with how to recreate the life of a woman like Lizzie. While dissection
and curation at the College of Physicians and Surgeons brought all of these indi-
viduals into a collective, I feel the need to remember that each of these people had
individual lives and diverse life courses that led to this gathering place. I wonder
what sort of “ethical person” I am in my intimate relations with the bodies of indi-
viduals who never asked or gave me permission to touch them (Joyce 2015).
In answering this question of ethics, I must also contend with the history of
physical anthropology, as the field emerged from this anatomizing tradition.
Hrdlička (1908, 34) defined physical anthropology as “That part of the science
which occupies itself with the body and its functions, investigating their differences,
causes, modes of development and tendencies, from man's beginning, and among
his present multiple groups….” Blakey (1996, 67) argues that Hrdlička’s anthropol-
ogy rose from and supported the notion that “social differences between human
groups were attributable to racial characteristics that reflected the extent of their
evolution.” The bodies of the poor, the black, and recent immigrants, who might all
be considered nonwhite during this time period, were turned into “human curios” to
answer questions about wider society (Wilder 2013, 194). Hrdlička (1897) first
encountered Huntington on his quest to measure the “abnormal.”
While we assume that all of the individuals in the Huntington Collection were
poor and marginalized, there were different experiences of marginalization based on
categories such as race and gender. Oftentimes these categories were assigned by
society during life and upon death by the doctor or student performing the dissec-
tion. “♀ Negro” is written upon Lizzie’s bones. She was a black woman and likely
lived her life being treated as such. Biological determinism dominated discussions
of race in the United States until WWII (and arguably takes new forms today), with
roots as far back as the Enlightenment. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, non-
European races, and especially those with dark skin, were considered to be funda-
mentally different and inferior, with biological variation accounting for differences
in cultural behavior (Caspari 2003; Gould 1996; Smedley and Smedley 2012).
Racialized science was used to contribute to ideologies about human difference
and rationalize the inferior treatment of blacks based on their supposed lack of intel-
ligence, morals, and animallike physical features (Caspari 2003; Gould 1996;
Smedley and Smedley 2012). These sorts of studies flourished in the nineteenth
century, with emphasis placed on studies of skin color, hair length and texture, and
anthropometry, especially of the head. Scientists claimed neutrality, while their
research fueled discriminatory public policy against blacks and other immigrant
communities. The dissection and study of individuals such as those contained in the
Huntington Collection were used to bolster these sorts of hypotheses.
Nevertheless, without the efforts of scientists like Hrdlička, researchers like
myself would not be able to study the remains of people from the past such as
Lizzie. I was trained using various teaching and archaeological collections made up
of the anonymous dead whose bodies helped form my identity as a bioarchaeolo-
gist. I have arrived at the Huntington Collection to ask very specific questions about
the intersections of race, class, and gender in the lives of women like Lizzie living
in New York City at the turn of the century. Therefore, if Huntington had not dis-
sected these marginalized members of society, contemporary scholars would be
unable to study their corporeal traces and learn more about the ways they lived and
died.
(Re)Articulating Huntington and His Collection
Hrdlička (1937), being a physical anthropologist, lamented the fact that there were
no measurements of Huntington. According to Hrdlička (1937), he was a bit above
average stature and stout but not obese. He only wore glasses at work, had good
teeth, and had a spacious but not high head. According to a colleague, “he lived and
breathed anatomy and cigarettes” (Hrdlička 1937, 273). His decline started with a
stroke in 1914, which led to partial paralysis, but he did not resign from the College
of Physicians and Surgeons until 1924. While there are many stories and correspon-
dences to reconstruct Dr. Huntington’s life, his skeletal remains, however, are not
available for study—he was cremated. But if his bones were present, what might we
find on them? Would his love of anatomy and cigarettes left any marks? What would
people say when analyzing his body? His remains would likely have been treated
and analyzed quite differently than those of Lizzie or the thousands of others in the
skeletal collection that bears his name.
Shortly after Huntington’s death, his student, Charles McClure, reminisced about
him: “Whatever was once associated with him, continues to bear his stamp. Scarcely
a day now passes in my laboratory in which some incident, some object, does not
bring to my mind the active days when he in New York and I in Princeton were
24 A. Lans
working as one mind on the same problem” (1927, 373). It should now be obvious
that it was not just these objects that were marked by Huntington. His entire identity
as an anatomist was dependent upon the bodies of humans that he dissected. It can
be argued that part of his identity lives on in the specimens he prepared, which now
bear his name, blurring the boundaries of life and death. Through a more reflexive
bioarchaeology, we might begin to reflect on and revitalize some of the individuals
who made Huntington’s career and his collection possible, such as Lizzie. As new
scholars begin the process anew, of making and remaking professionals, specimens,
and historical accounts, a more inclusive narrative is possible.
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Chapter 3
Anatomical Collections as the Anthropological
Other: Some Considerations
Rachel Watkins
Contents
Introduction 27
Disclaimer/Position Statement 30
Context for the Discussion 30
The W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection 34
Recent Studies of the Cobb Skeletal Collection 36
Anatomical Remains and Osteological Subject Making 38
Anatomical Remains as the Raw Material of Scientific Knowledge Production 40
Conclusions and Considerations 42
References 44
Introduction
Skeletal studies of anatomical collections are foundational to the scientific concep-

tualizations of race that remain at the center of discussions and debates about genes,
health, and identity. However, they do not factor into these discussions as a histori-
cal or contemporary point of reference. I argue that this is largely due to the limited
social and historical contextualization of anatomical collections that obscures their
relevance to contemporary discussions about race, science, and inequality. This
statement might appear to disregard the integration of social theory and rich historical
contextualization that characterizes existing studies, but this is not the case. I argue
that such a statement is justified due to the continued investment in the production
of scientific knowledge, which includes a naturalized positioning of anatomical
remains as always-already research subjects. Redressing this shortcoming requires
a theorization of anatomical remains belying artificial separations between the
humanities, sciences, social sciences, and the arts (McKittrick 2014). Comparatively,
we see a broad use of social theory in archaeology and bioarchaeology. This includes
feminist and Black feminist turns (Battle-Baptiste 2011; Conkey and Spector 1984;
R. Watkins (*)
Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: watkins@american.edu

28 R. Watkins
Franklin 2001; Gero and Conkey 1991). In spite of developments in the analyses of
anatomical remains, they have yet to be subject to literature unformed by these
turns. Arguably, this serves to obscure the full measure of their relevance to the past
and present.
My interest in interrogating how we position anatomical remains stems from an
understanding of how research operates in constructing the past, as well as indicat-
ing how we are socially embedded in the present (Barrett and Blakey 2011). My
general motivation for this discussion is rooted in my investment in contributing to
method and theory associated with critical and humanistic approaches to studying
human biology. Specifically, I am invested in establishing space for analytical per-
spectives that counter existing notions that exclusively situate “white” critical schol-
arship universally applicable to analyses of inequality, agency, and resistance. I see
this as central to developing more rigorous and liberatory research practices, as well
as addressing the dearth of people of color and other underrepresented groups in
biological anthropology.
This discussion builds upon one started in a coauthored paper interrogating nor-
mative scientific practices as they relate to biocultural and biohistorical analyses of
the W. Montague Cobb skeletal collection (Watkins and Muller 2015a). Our inter-
rogation led us to construct a study sample including people for whom skeletons
were no longer present. The point was to encourage different ways of scientifically
knowing and understanding the collection in terms of social and historical context,
as well as understanding it as an assemblage of human beings who reflect our pres-
ent back to us in terms of how to study them.1
I continued exploring the collection beyond normative scientific frameworks in a
book chapter discussing how the collection has been scientifically and politically
mobilized in different ways over time (Watkins 2017a). In emphasizing the nonsta-
tionarity of the collection, I suggest other possibilities for mobilizing the collection
relative to its potential contemporary social and intellectual relevance. This includes
using social theory that positions remains to be articulated with studies and theori-
zations of the body in other disciplines. Based on the collection’s coexistence with
the New York African Burial Ground skeletal sample, I also consider the treatment
of anatomical remains in light of repatriation (Watkins 2017b).
I followed with a piece offering a closer examination of bioanthropological
research practices around the study of skeletal remains and what they say about the
current social and intellectual state of the field. Black feminist and critical race
theory is used to illustrate that epistemological underpinnings that maintain norma-
tive scientific practices are also those tied to its racist past. The continued influences
of these underpinnings are evidenced by (1) the rhetorical invention of existing
ideas in the field as new or emerging, (2) the continued dearth of people of color and
other minorities in the field, and (3) the under-citation of their scholarship (Bolnick
and Smith 2017; Lee and Clancy 2017; Perez 2017; Watkins 2017b). Specifically, I
1
Unfortunately, we were unable to complete this project, as it was deemed too much of a departure
from the preferred research foci outlined by the laboratory director (see Jackson 2015b; Watkins
and Muller 2015b).
3 Anatomical Collections as the Anthropological Other: Some Considerations 29
use the concepts of biocentricity and colorblindness to frame the ideological and
structural conditions that limit our ability to operate outside of these social, politi-
cal, and intellectual confines. Biocentricity is rooted in strict, normative categoriza-
tions of humans constituted through scientific practices. Humanity is idealized as
white, Western, and male, with people on racial, ethnic, gendered, and heteronorma-
tive margins situated as nonhuman (Weheliye 2014; Wynter 2003). These biocentric
parameters serve to limit possibilities for human existence within those constituted
through racialized, scientific practices.
I continue my discussion here by way of focusing on how the specific posi-
tioning of anatomical collections relative to archaeological samples reflects the
biocentric underpinnings that continue to influence the discipline. As such, they
operate as what Weheliye refers to as racializing assemblages through which
social and political processes are carried out that actualize and reinforce biocen-
tric principles. In turn, these principles maintain a racially determined scientific
and social order (Wynter and Scott 2000; Weheliye 2014). I will outline several
ways that anatomical remains are situated that underscore their deployment as
racializing assemblages rather than fluid historical texts and agents. I will also
discuss how these circumstances are tied to the naturalization of certain groups
as research subjects and how this limits the ability to identify connections
between people in the collections we study and living populations with which
they are associated – by self-selection and imposition. I continue to focus on the
W. Montague Cobb anatomical collection but also address how these issues bear
more broadly upon anatomical collections and scientific and social relations in the
USA.
Taken together, these discussions are meant to be situated along side current
discussions about decolonized approaches to anthropological study. Specifically,
they complement Allen and Jobson’s discussion about the “decolonizing genera-
tion” of the 1990s, which they characterize as a cohort of Black, allied antiracist,
feminist, and political economy-oriented scholars (Allen and Jobson 2016). This is
most appropriate because the curator of the Cobb Collection at the time, Michael
Blakey, was a member of said generation and contributed to the volume, Decolonizing
Anthropology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology for Liberation (Harrison
1991, 1997). Blakey’s chapter, titled “Man and Nature, White and Other,” is an early
statement of the interdisciplinary and publicly engaged teaching and research orien-
tation that informed curation and research on the Cobb Collection, as well as the
New York African Burial Ground project’s research design. Both aspects of this
orientation are antithetical to biocentrism. Therefore, while Allen and Jobson limit
their reference of Blakey’s chapter to his critique of historical constructions of race,
it even more so reflects contemporary and critical approaches to scientific study.
This is the lynchpin of a decolonized bioanthropology: location within the broader
anthropological movement of “freeing the study of humankind from prevailing
forces of global inequality and dehumanization” and embracing diffuse and creative
approaches to addressing social problems and structures of dominance (Harrison
1997, 10).
30 R. Watkins
Disclaimer/Position Statement
Understanding that science is a social practice, I offer the following disclaimers and
directives:
1. My use of intellectual and political work associated with the Cobb Collection to
illustrate research departures from biocentric perspectives does not mean that I
am situating this work beyond reproach. At the same time, this work has yet to
be fully integrated into a broader scheme of methodological and theoretical
developments in the field. Upon the proper integration of this work into the intel-
lectual terrain, I look forward to engaging in discussions where a full consider-
ation can be given to the merits and shortcomings of the work.
2. I write as a Black and female-identified feminist and bioanthropologist who is
unwilling to exist as an academic without bringing my consciousness of the par-
ticular assault on Black bodies – male, female, non-gender conforming, and
trans – into my scholarly inquiry.2 I view the expected separation of this aware-
ness and scientific knowledge as a racial underpinning to be contested (McKittrick
2014).
3. Given my awareness of how race operates on individual and structural levels, I
am moved to state for the record that my perspective is mine alone. It is not
meant to be representative of all of the (few) Black and female identified people
in the field. Therefore, no questions should be directed toward other Black and
female identified colleagues about its contents as if this is the case.
Context for the Discussion
Given its prominence in recent historical and social profiling of anatomical remains,
I will start by discussing the biocentric positioning of anatomical remains as a form
of structural violence. Current discussions of anatomy and dissection practices as
forms of structural violence are being used to situate anatomical collections within
the history of medicine, science, as well as people’s social and biological lives
(Nystrom 2014, 2017).3 Building on Farmer’s notion that health disparities are the
embodiment of normalized social inequalities, the disembodiment of people on
racial and ethnic margins to populate anatomical collections is framed as a form of
2
I detail my positionality as a researcher, which I refer to as an alter(ed)native perspective follow-
ing Ulysses (2007) in the paper, An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology
(Watkins 2017a).
3
Johan Galtung developed the concept of structural violence to explain the harm done to individu-
als and groups by way of socially embedded constraints that limit access to resources and power
(Galtung 1969). These structural forces play a key role in direct injury or death. Paul Farmer is
credited with proposing an anthropological orientation toward structural violence to understand
social inequalities in modern life related to health (Farmer 2004).
structural violence (Farmer 2004; Galtung 1969; Nystrom 2014).4 Both examples
illustrate that the appropriation of this concept fits with growing investment in
developing critical and humanistic approaches to studying human biology (Blakey
1998). At the end of Nystrom’s 2014 paper, he urges fellow bioanthropologists to
“be aware of our position within the structure we are examining and our potential to
contribute to the violence” (Nystrom 2014, 775). This general admonition is echoed
elsewhere (such as Zuckerman et al. 2014) but without detailing how it might occur.
This chapter uses the theory mentioned above to offer an illustration of what “the
structure” and “the violence” look like. Unlike archaeological samples, the relation-
ship between the remains, laboratories, and researchers is rarely destabilized or con-
ceptualized outside of biocentric confines that reinforce the subscribed role of each
entity. As a result, there is a way that these collections remain available for scientific
study that differs from the shifting availability of remains under legal or what I refer
to as sociopolitical protection. It follows then that as well-meaning as we are in our
historical treatments and mindfulness of structural violence, the unquestioned posi-
tioning of anatomical remains as research subjects could be considered a form of
structural violence that we as researchers are perpetrating.
I am also writing with several problematic conditions regarding the state of our
discipline in mind. Bioanthropology lags behind other disciplines in self-critical
examination due to an ongoing conflation of critiquing scientific racism with cri-
tiquing structural racism (Duster 2015; Hill Collins 2015). Scholars within and out-
side of biological anthropology associate this with the thinking that critical
examinations of scientists as social actors are unnecessary because [we] rid our-
selves of [our] racist pasts. Therefore, no basis for examining how researchers are
currently involved in creating, maintaining, and resisting structural inequalities –
both within and outside of the discipline – exists. This leaves space for a rather
uncritically examined use of largely “white” critical scholarship as generally appli-
cable to analyses of oppression. The framing of scholarship by people of color as
too specific to be generally applicable to these analyses also goes unquestioned and
is thus disregarded. This is evident in the under-citation of this work in spite of its
relevance to specific and current questions in the discipline at this time. This sense
of specificity also lends itself to maintaining isolated biohistorical examinations of
how marginalized groups experience and address oppression. For instance, the com-
munity engagement model used for the New York African Burial Ground and Cobb
skeletal collections was influenced by the scientific director’s participation in dis-
cussions with indigenous groups about NAGPRA.5 Both are reflected in the policy
4
To encompass the breadth of existing bioanthropological research on structural violence, we need
to include de la Cova’s 2012 study of trauma patterns in European and African-American women.
Her research indicated that some injuries reflected interactions between individuals who were
subject to institutionalization and the state. Specifically, she uses the concept to uniquely connect
accidental injury, intimate partner violence, and state structural violence (in the form of institu-
tional policies and protocols) to understand the raced and gendered experience of trauma.
5
Blakey was also influenced by conversations he was having with cultural anthropologists about
the change in the dynamics of interaction between communities that are the focus of research and
the researchers (Blakey 2010).
32 R. Watkins
of honoring the wishes of next of kin to inter or cremate the remains of relatives
identified in the anatomical collection (Blakey 1995, 15).
However, in the literature, these groups are talked about independently of one
another in a way that undermines identifying and addressing structural constraints
impacting the biological and social lives of both groups. This includes the epistemo-
logical underpinnings that get in the way of fundamentally transforming the disci-
pline’s social and intellectual relationship to both groups. Again, the small numbers
of Native Americans and Blacks in the field are evidence of this lack of change. In
the interest of writing against that isolation here, I draw upon Black feminist and
other African descendant scholarship in analyzing the positioning of anatomical
remains. I also use language typically associated with critical studies of genetic and
skeletal research on indigenous and diasporic populations to describe the biocen-
trism at work. This includes the concepts of “osteological subject making” and the
critical framing of both Black and Native American bodies as “raw material” for the
production of scientific knowledge (Spillers 1987; Spillers et al. 2007; TallBear
2013). Hortense Spillers’ theorization of Black bodies as raw material is especially
helpful in this critical examination of our research practices because of her distinc-
tion between “the body” and “flesh.” The body connotes agency that the flesh, as
raw material, lacks. As such, persons as flesh have no agency and are thus subject to
consumption and interpretation by others. Most importantly, Spillers’ distinction
between body and flesh offers an important deconstruction of our bioanthropologi-
cal sense of what we are doing to situate the remains of individuals we study as
agents – which we often (and ironically) refer to as “putting flesh” on the skeletons.
In spite of reconstructing lifeways in the context of social and cultural processes, we
privilege scientific translation and positioning anatomical remains as static entities
perpetually available for research. As a result, we situate them as flesh, as Spillers
defines it, more so than bodies upon which we add “flesh.”
Moreover, because African-Americans are largely represented in most anatomi-
cal collections in the USA, there is a way in which our scientific study of these
remains demonstrates the process of utilizing Black bodies as raw material (“flesh”).
The history of African descendant people factors heavily in the production of scien-
tific knowledge in biological anthropology, with a comparatively small number of
African descendant people in the field as knowledge producers. Arguably, Spillers’
motivation for theorizing a distinction between bodies and flesh offers a model for
moving bioanthropology toward a more intellectually rigorous and liberatory prac-
tice. She highlights the need for developing language and discourse that necessitates
the presence of Black women’s participation in intellectual processes regarding the
historicization of Black bodies. Such an agenda can be used to create space for
people of color and other underrepresented groups more broadly. The point is not to
create new language but to integrate language and theory from existing, disregarded
“minority” scholarship into our analyses of inequality. This work also provides
important inroads for analyses of resistance and agency lacking in our research
models.
Intellectual and political work associated with the Cobb anatomical collection is
used to illustrate the explanatory power of this scholarship for rigorous examinations
of systems of power and oppression within biological anthropology. Specifically,

this scholarship allows for exploring how these remains as material assemblages
were and are used to enable modes of being and knowing outside of dominant, bio-
centric paradigms of knowledge (Bolnick and Smith 2017; Hill Collins 1998; Perez
2017; Ulysses 2007). Ultimately, this discussion will leave readers aware of how
this scholarship can and should be used to develop non-biocentric ways of concep-
tualizing the interactions between skeletal remains, their ties to space and place/
geography, scientific practice, living people, and the structures that shape and are
shaped by them.
It is my observation that major anatomical collections in the USA in the past and
present are at the center of the production of scientific anthropological knowledge.
As collections of largely known individuals, they were and are used to develop and
demonstrate scientific rigor in terms of racial identification (historically), sex deter-
mination, identification of pathologies, and looking at biological and social well-
being associated with general and specific historical events and contexts. The major
cadaver populations in the USA largely made of people on racial and ethnic margins
do not usually factor into current ethical discussions about repatriation, protection,
and reburial because they are historically marked as “unclaimed,” were not subject
to burial, and are typically housed in the protective environment of museums or
other research institutions. As a result, there is a level at which these collections are
assumed to be “available” for study that places them outside of the realm of being
considered for legal protection. The absence of burial context also seems to place
them outside of spheres of oversight and accountability that come with working
with remains with a burial context and (perceived or otherwise) connections to par-
ticular places or groups of people. As a result, anatomical collections exist in a
rather unique way as always-already research subjects.
This reveals an interesting irony: bioarchaeological method and theory are
applied broadly to the study of anatomical collections and adds to the social, histori-
cal, and scientific rigor of our research. I write elsewhere that this is sometimes done
to a fault, such as applying the osteological paradox to anatomical collections. This
is because applying the paradox in the study of anatomical collections requires dis-
regarding the stated intentions for creating these collections – not to mention the
knowledge of their composition – on the part of their architects. However, the atten-
dant social and political concerns contributing to methodological and theoretical
developments in bioarchaeology do not migrate into the research process/agenda of
studying anatomical collections. For instance, NAGPRA in part destabilized the
notion that Native American identified human remains and artifacts would remain
housed in museums and research institutions as research subjects/objects in perpe-
tuity. Thus emerged a new category of subject/object – the repatriable – something
that has the possibility of being returned (Kakaliouras 2012; Olivier 2001). Similarly,
in the absence of formal legal protection, the social and political unrest following
the rediscovery of the New York African Burial Ground led to a destabilizing of a
certain type of racialized research subject. The self-identified descendant commu-
nity informed the study of the remains in a diasporic context rather than a history
defined by enslavement (Blakey 2010; Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2004). This
34 R. Watkins
c ommunity also participated in decision making regarding laboratory practices, as

well as the ultimate resting place for the remains. Therefore, the remains from the
NYABG were situated as repatriables of a sort, being reinterred after a period of
research. As such, remains do not enter into ongoing discussions emerging in vari-
ous communities of color and native communities about how the treatment of
remains and artifacts has implications for how people are treated in the present. The
point here is not to make an undue correlation between anatomical collections and
remains with a burial context but to make the point that concepts/ways of thinking
have emerged over the past decades that disrupt the continuous existence of remains
and artifacts as subject/objects but are not applied to anatomical collections.
The next section provides an overview of intellectual and political work associ-
ated with the Cobb Collection over the years. This work reflects the ways that the
collection was used to examine interactions between science, racism, and inequality
as well as its fluidity. I will follow with a discussion of the ways in which anatomi-
cal collections are generally positioned comparatively, as well as scientific and
broader implications.
The W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection
The W. Montague Cobb Human Skeletal Collection was one of several data sets
housed in the anthropology laboratory that Cobb established in 1932 after complet-
ing doctoral studies in biological anthropology at Western Reserve University
(Cobb 1936a). Remains acquired prior to the mid-1950s were unclaimed for burial
by relatives, and in keeping with the laws at the time, bodies were distributed to
medical schools for use in gross anatomy classes. The history of the collection as
well as details of its composition are chronicled in a number of publications (see
Blakey 1988, 1995; de la Cova 2012; Rankin Hill and Blakey 1994; Watkins 2007,
2012). In general, the collection is described as a sample of predominantly African-
American individuals living in DC at the time of death (Blakey 1988, 1995).
However, the collection also includes Chinese, East Asian, and European and
US-born “whites.”
Cobb began processing cadaver for the collection in 1932 and continued until
1969. Records including variable amounts of data accompanied each individual,
including age, sex, ethnicity, occupation, nativity, and cause of death. Some records
also include photographs, drawings, measurements, and notes on specific medical
conditions. Files indicate that most individuals were day laborers or domestics and
lived in the northwest quadrant of the city. However, a substantial number of individu-
als in the collection were residents of the city’s poorhouse. Because of ethnicity and
class markers attributed to the sample, the collection is considered to be representative
of a socially and economically marginal population. The collection originally con-
sisted of 932 adult skeletons and 48 infant remains. However, this number has been
reduced to roughly 650 individuals after a period of long-term storage in the basement
of the Howard University School of Medicine after Cobb’s retirement in 1974.
It was standard practice for Cobb’s anatomy students to study these records
along with the cadaver and (later) the skeleton, as it was essential to understanding
how mortality statistics and demographics were informed by social context (Blakey
and Rankin-Hill 1985; Cobb 1935, 1936a). This interface was particularly impor-
tant in understanding how cadaver populations historically represent particular seg-
ments of the population (which Cobb referred to as “poorly circumstanced”).6
Therefore, the biocultural syntheses and health disparities reflected in such collec-
tions are not associated with being representative of the general population (Cobb
1935). This interface is an example of Cobb’s departure from an “excessive natural-
ism” that historically upheld biological determinism and obscured human responsi-
bility in the condition and study of biological and social well-being (Blakey 1998).
More specifically, this interface reflects an awareness of how the cadaver and skel-
etal remains were socially embedded and how that awareness is integral to scientific
investigation and understanding of the individuals. It goes without saying that
obscuring these factors had implications for how power and resources were distrib-
uted in society, such that Howard was one of the few institutions at which African-
Americans could be educated – let alone study medicine – at the time. This departure
was a way of confronting inequalities and structural and symbolic violence at work
in the standardized racialization project in biological anthropology at the time
(Harrison 1991). As such, along with rigorous and systematic collection of data and
analyses in his teaching and research, race was at the center of political and intel-
lectual deliberation in the laboratory. I and others have written elsewhere about how
Cobb positioned himself as a researcher to challenge racial discourses rooted in
Nazi ideology (Cobb 1936b), as well as the US-based scientific and Jim Crow ideol-
ogy from which it stemmed. He published in a range of academic venues as well as
writing for public consumption (such as Cobb 1934, 1943). In sum, the laboratory
is built upon principles counter to the biocentric epistemological underpinnings in
place then and now. Promotion of different human possibilities as it relates to peo-
ple of color as knowledge producers rather than merely subjects.
This focus continued during the second iteration of the laboratory beginning in
1988. Anatomical remains were retrieved from the basement of the Howard
University Medical School, where they were placed upon Cobb’s retirement in
1974. Starting in 1992, internal and external funding from the National Science
Foundation were secured to expand and renovate the Cobb laboratory for proper
storage, research, and teaching space. Blakey announced that the collection was
formally available for research in 1995.
Student training in human osteology and bioanthropological research methods
were an integral part of developing the laboratory and its collections during the late
6
Cobb’s article “Municipal History from Anatomical Records” (1935) was his first key statement
on his biocultural approach to studying remains from anatomical collections. This involved taking
into consideration “sociological and historical facts” that indicate that individuals came from the
“least stable elements of marginal economic groups in the living population” (157).The paper was
a by-product of his dissertation research on what is now called the Hamann-Todd anatomical col-
lection in Cleveland, OH. The collection he established at Howard was structured to model that
collection (Rankin-Hill and Blakey 1994; Watkins 2007).
36 R. Watkins
1980s and early 1990s. Many students were hired to assist with cleaning, inventory,
and other aspects of organization after taking his introductory course in human oste-
ology. In the process of this work with the collection, students received hands-on
training in identifying skeletal pathology and refining skills around age and sex
determination. However, decidedly, students were not trained in the (still) contro-
versial process of identifying what we now call ancestry. This is in keeping with the
intellectual lineage within which the laboratory is situated through Cobb as an
African-American scientist invested in civil rights and equality – and as a student of
T. Wingate Todd’s.7 Understanding science as a social practice, the imprecision of
racial identification was linked to the historical uses of the method to aid in racial
subjugation. Students were taught that multiple data should be used, if possible, to
establish and biological and cultural profile of individuals and groups.
The Cobb skeletal collection and documents continue to be housed in the labora-
tory now bearing Cobb’s name, along with genetic and other data from the New York
African Burial Ground.8 Data are now consolidated into what is called the 4Cs data-
base, referring to the 400 years of African-American biohistory encompassed in the
span of time between the NYABG and Cobb Collections (Jackson et al. 2016). The
intellectual work in the laboratory continues in a way that emphasizes political and
social relevance. In 2015, Fatimah Jackson, current Director of the Cobb Research
Laboratory, announced a commitment to use teaching and research in the laboratory
to encourage people of color to engage in STEM fields (Jackson 2015a, 2015b).
Recent Studies of the Cobb Skeletal Collection
A small number of studies have featured the collection relative to the number of
years the collection has been available for research. However, those studies also
emphasized gaining knowledge of the individuals over the production of scientific
knowledge. Initial research conducted by Watkins and Muller (2003 and 2006
respectively) prioritized the identification of individuals and groups within the col-
lection within a historical, social, and biological context that did not privilege
7
Cobb notes that Todd had a set of skulls he called the humiliators; “they looked like one thing, but
he had photographs and documents to show what they were. And he would have the experts look
at these skulls and say what they were, and prove them wrong....” [As cited by Rankin Hill and
Blakey 1985, CPRHBI 1985:2, 22].
8
Fatimah Jackson, Director of the Cobb Research Laboratory, recently announced a commitment
to utilize the space to provide informal STEM learning opportunities to undergraduate students,
graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers (2015a, b). The STEM-related investigations will
draw upon 20 generations of African-American biological history from both the Cobb and NYABG
collections. Data are consolidated into what Jackson and colleagues refer to as the 4Cs database,
referring to the 400 years of African-American biohistory encompassed in the span of time between
the NYABG and Cobb Collections (Jackson et al. 2016). The database is presented as ideal for
interdisciplinary “next-generation” science research as a unique accumulation of historically con-
textualized big data “on an underrepresented group known to have experienced differential sur-
vival over time” (Jackson et al. 2016, 510).
statistical analysis. For instance, Watkins focused part of her comparative analysis
on individuals who lived in the District’s poorhouse and those who lived in residen-
tial neighborhoods. Differences in health between the two groups appear to reflect
differences in access to social services and support. However, unlike poorhouse
samples from Upstate New York, people in residential neighborhoods show more
infectious disease burden and biological stress related to physical demand (Watkins
2003, 2012). Historical documents indicate that conditions in the poorhouse were
not ideal, let alone categorically “healthy.” However, residence in the poorhouse
involved incorporation into the city’s relief system. Therefore, the health and dis-
ease patterns observed in people living throughout the city reflected their lack of
access to these services. Similarly, Muller’s study of trauma in the Cobb Collection
points to uniquely high degrees and patterns of trauma compared with other skeletal
collections. She attributes her findings to the politics of racism that restricted Blacks
to an occupational status associated with the most menial and physically demanding
jobs. Muller’s interpretation of the frequency and patterning of fractures and dislo-
cations indicates a high level of trauma associated with accidents and interpersonal
violence (Muller 2006). Remains from the Cobb Collection are included in several
of de la Cova’s analyses of trauma and other aspects of health in the nineteenth-
century anatomical collections (de la Cova 2010, 2011).9
A paper titled “Dissection and Documented Skeletal Collections: Embodiments
of Legalized Inequality” factors the Cobb Collection into recent discussions fram-
ing anatomy and dissection practices as a form of structural violence (Muller et al.
2017). This paper is included in an edited volume in this series, titled, The
Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy, which focuses on the deliberate prac-
tices around establishing collections rooted in beliefs about the varied worth of
particular individuals and groups (Nystrom 2017). The discussion subjects the col-
lection to yet another form of mobilization by way of articulating its history with
that of the Huntington and Hamann Todd collections.
Extending the concept of structural violence past the process of creating the
samples brings different historical considerations into view. For instance, twenty-
first century studies of the Cobb Collection indeed use documents to understand
the social context of health and disease patterns observed in the skeletal sample
(Blakey et al. 1994; de la Cova 2010, 2011; Muller 2006; Watkins 2003, 2012).
However, the skeletal remains that are now available for study do not reflect the
demographic breath of the original sample. Census records did not suffer the same
fate, as important demographic, medical, etc. information for all individuals in the
9
It is also worth noting that de la Cova predates Nystrom drawing upon the concept of structural
violence in the analysis and interpretation of health in an anatomical collection. Her 2012 study of
256 European American and African-American females found the latter group had more fractures
to the face and hand suggestive of intimate partner violence, while the former group had signifi-
cantly higher incidences of hip and arm fractures, suggestive of accidental injuries. Documentary
analysis allowed her to obtain evidence that both African and Euro-American women were institu-
tionalized. She therefore suggests that trauma patterns cannot solely be read as reflections of inter-
personal interactions. They are also likely to reflect the interactions between individuals and the
state by way of subjection to institutional protocols.
38 R. Watkins
original sample were maintained. Based upon these circumstances, Watkins and
Muller proposed situating the skeletal remains and documents as a collective
archive from which to develop a sample that includes individuals for whom we
have skeletons and individuals for whom skeletons no longer exist (Watkins and
Muller 2015a, 2015b). This mobilization of skeletal remains and documents is the
result of critical reflection upon how a singular focus on the skeletal remains privi-
leges the scientific investigation of individuals over other forms of analysis. In
other words, the focus on existing skeletal remains reflect an investment in produc-
ing scientific knowledge rather than knowledge of the population sample. As such,
this potentially constitutes a form of structural violence upon individuals in the
collection that researchers can exact. Consider Farmer’s assertion that the erasure
of history is a mechanism and result of structural violence (2004). The archival
approach that Watkins and Muller propose allows for a historical treatment of the
collection that is not possible if a researcher limits the study of the collection to
existing skeletal remains. The inclusion of individuals for whom we no longer have
skeletons in studies allows for a study sample that includes infants, older sub-
adults, and named “whites” who were a part of the original skeletal collection. A
sample that is more representative of all age and demographic categories is one
that makes for a more comprehensive and inclusive history of the collection and
the people within it.
This outline of research and curation of the Cobb anatomical collection indi-
cates that in spite of the rather stationary positioning of anatomical remains in
laboratories, they are fluid. Their purpose, appearance, and meaning change based
on the cultural and scientific ideas of their keepers (Knoeff and Zwijnenberg 2015a,
2015b, 5). As products of cultural and scientific practices, it is not possible for
them to be treated as “finished objects” as suggested by their perpetual state as
research subjects. Records often associated with these collections are central to
their ability to move across time and in some cases space. In spite of this fluidity,
anatomical collections have historically been positioned as flesh rather than bod-
ies, as I describe below.
Anatomical Remains and Osteological Subject Making
In the original version of this paper (Watkins 2003), I talked about the static posi-
tioning of anatomical remains in the context of osteological subject making.
Kakaliouras used this term to describe the process of constructing indigenous pasts
through exclusively scientific investigation of skeletal remains (Kakaliouras 2012).
As such, they actually bear little to no resemblance to the people in the past or pres-
ent with whom they are associated. This underscores the tension between the disci-
plining of humanity that takes place through specific categories of the human that
result from scientific translation and human existence outside of biocentric contexts.
I argue that this characterization of anatomical remains is justified mainly because
of disconnects between the remains and relevant bodies of literature outside of bio-
anthropology that I outline below. I also discuss these remains as raw material for
the same reason.
I mentioned earlier that recent studies of the Cobb Collection did not prioritize
scientific production of knowledge in the form of statistical analysis. However,
these studies did prioritize normative scientific translation in limiting their attention
to people for whom skeletons are still present. Therefore, a historical, social, and
biological knowledge of people in the collection was undermined by the focus on
producing an “osteological person” used to illustrate biocultural interrelationships
based on the interpretive skills of researchers (Kakaliouras 2012). Studies of the
Cobb Collection indicate that a variety of cultural processes are associated with the
different health states represented in the collection. Differences in the health of
individuals who resided in the city’s poorhouse and those living throughout the city
are but one piece of evidence. However, these cultural processes do not disrupt the
fundamental positioning of these individuals as research subjects for scientific
translation. This underscores their paradoxical positioning as both dynamic and
stationary.
Kakaliouras notes that as a result, osteological subjects bear little resemblance to
the past or present groups of people with which they are associated. I already men-
tioned that the focus on constructing and studying osteological persons in the Cobb
Collection obscured its full demographic breadth and thus a more accurate repre-
sentation of its biological and social past. This in turn has implications for how this
research can be articulated with broader studies of the past that contribute to under-
standing its connection to the broader social, political, and economic histories of
anatomical collections necessary for understanding the interactions between sci-
ence, racism, and inequality. For instance, historian Craig Steven Wilder discusses
anatomical study in the context of its ties to enslavement and establishing colleges
and universities in the USA. These environments were financed through and used to
construct and refine ideas intellectually legitimizing enslavement. The emerging
“medical arts” were also central to constructing college and university identities
(Wilder 2013). This of course required bodies, and those most readily used belonged
to people with little to no legal protection. Therefore, this history of very specific
placement of some people as research subjects, while others were situated as pro-
ducers of knowledge, illustrates enduring and direct connections between capital-
ism, marginality to the law, and the squelching of lives belonging to Blacks and
other racialized minorities. The fact that this is an enduring connection speaks to the
importance of situating anatomical collections in ways that illuminate their contem-
porary relevance. However, the biocentric processes that guide our construction of
osteological persons prohibit conceptualizations of humanity that facilitate this.
Osteological subjects are also disconnected from concerns that people have
about their present. Given the composition of US anatomical collections, we are
justified in using this as an opportunity to address the disconnect between the con-
struction of osteological people and the contemporary concerns that African-
American communities have (Kakaliouras 2012). What structures of power that
connect living breathing people of color to these collections are being obscured?
What aspects of the deep history of devaluing the lives of certain groups of people
in the USA are being obscured as a result of this disconnect?
40 R. Watkins
The Robert J. Terry anatomical collection originated in the town near where an
unarmed Michael Brown was shot by a police officer and left for dead in the street
for 4 h. The same state where students subsequently mobilized in protest against
injustices on campuses and throughout the country. Similarly, the Hamann-Todd
anatomical collection originated and is housed in the same town where a 12-year-
old boy playing in a park with a toy gun, Tamir Rice, was mistaken for 20-year-old
man brandishing a weapon and was shot dead. How can we go beyond a general
discussion of structural violence and the history of anatomical collections to situate
ourselves and our work – that results largely from unencumbered access to Black
bodies – within the contemporary examination of the devaluing of Black life? How
might this involve positioning the remains in ways that better articulate them with
living populations? How do we compromise the integrity of our research by study-
ing the differential treatment of marginalized bodies in the past without tying it to
contemporary movements for social justice countering the differential treatment of
Black and other bodies in the present? The structural violence at work in the past
and present, as well as the reinscription of Black bodies as research subjects, has
important implications given the substantial number of African-Americans in US
anatomical collections. Materiality and ideologically these collections speak to the
depths of the differential valuing of lives along lines of race, class, gender, and sexu-
ality. There is the potential for illustrating profound connections between biological
and social well-being in the past and present. However, connections between the
acquisition of bodies on racial and ethnic margins for anatomical collections and the
present treatment and devaluing of Black bodies are obscured by way of scientific
translation.
natomical Remains as the Raw Material of Scientific

A
Knowledge Production
Therefore, osteological subject making is part and parcel of reinforcing the notion
that people historically situated as research subjects remain as such. There is a sense
of urgency to address this based on the stark reality that there is a longer history of
people of color being involved in bioanthropological research subjects than as
researchers. Nonminority scholars operate with built-in power, privilege, and value
placed on scholarship rooted in the racist past of the discipline. People of color
operate without such privileges as a result of the same legacy. Without examining
and addressing this, our field will continue to exist in a way that maintains structural
inequalities maintaining these disparities and normalizing the use of Black and
other marginalized bodies as the “raw material” for the production of scientific
knowledge.
From a science studies’ perspective, Kim TallBear notes that this process involves
racializing scientists and research subjects in ways that reinscribe racial and scientific
norms that reflect biocentricity. Scientists are racialized in ways that allow for the
category of whiteness to be enacted through the subjectivity of the scientists.
Whiteness is not just about European ancestry but rationality and modernity. This is
important to understand as an epistemological foundational of the structural dispari-
ties related to a dearth of people of color in the field and positioning white scholar-
ship as universal. Returning to connections between our work, capitalism,
enslavement anatomical study, and racism, Spillers uses this interaction as the basis
for characterizing Blackness produced during enslavement as a type of living matter
(Spillers 1987). Persons as matter are absent of bodily agency and thus marked as
raw material for various forms of consumption and production (Raengo 2016;
Spillers 1987). This underscores the raw materiality of Blackness as a source of
intellectual study in biological anthropology in light of our pattern of osteological
subject making. Spillers characterizes the histories of Black people as “something
you could use as a note of inspiration, but it was never anything that had anything to
do with you - you could never use it to explain something in theoretical terms”
(Spillers et al. 2007, 300). She generated her theorization of Black bodies in the
interest of necessitating the involvement of Black women in theoretical conversa-
tions. And so I use it for the same purpose here. Spillers’ work serves as an interpre-
tive frame for the structural inequalities that we attribute to the racialized history of
the field remaining intact. As such, space for people of color to exist in the field as
knowledge producers will continue to be obstructed by ideologies and practices that
naturalize [our] presence as research subjects. Moreover, her distinction between
body and flesh offers a solid deconstruction of [our] bioanthropological sense of
how we put “flesh” on the skeletons through exploring postmortem agency and
historical context. The epistemological underpinnings of our field are such that we
situate remains as flesh more along the lines of how Spillers defines it than our
intended fleshing of skeletons. One of the most important pieces of Spillers’ theori-
zation is how it speaks to our research practices and the social relations within bio-
anthropology. Her work speaks to the need for space that accommodates scholars
who live and study structural inequalities. This includes considering how historical
and contemporary associations with the people in the collections we study factor
into critical social theory we draw upon to analyze inequality and resistance in our
work. This provides a basis for arguing that a rigorous bioanthropology needs to
accommodate exploring how identities of people in the present are tied to and/or
mobilized through these remains (Crandall and Martin 2014). The recognition of
postmortem agency is arguably limited to considering how the identity known as
“researcher” is shaped through scientific encounters with the skeletal remains.
This makes sense because it is not an identity that counters the biocentric frame-
work within which our studies take place. However, little to no attention is paid to
how the identities of researchers who experience and study structural inequality
are shaped by engaging these remains. This serves to obscure the fact that research-
ers are and always have been politically situated (Abu-Lughod 1991; Cantave 2017;
Ulysses 2007).
42 R. Watkins
Conclusions and Considerations
Past and current mobilizations of the Cobb Collection point to the need for theoriza-
tion that will preclude the structural violence associated with a limited exploration
of its relevance to current social, political, and scientific interests. If we are not
limiting our examination of structural violence to the past treatment of people in life
and death, then we are moved to question the notion of skeletal remains in anatomi-
cal collections existing in perpetuity as “raw material” for the production of anthro-
pological knowledge (Spillers et al. 2007; TallBear 2013). This in turn begs the
question of an uncritical regard for laboratory space as a “natural” environment for
remains to exist in perpetuity. It also underscores the need for looking more closely
at how structural violence is enacted through current research practices. This
involves an ethnographic visibility of bioanthropologists as researchers and social
actors who are implicated in shaping the past and present within biocentric param-
eters – which has implications for the future of the field.
An examination of our current research practices in the context of structural
violence also means that we must consider how we might better integrate our
research with broader intellectual and political discussions within and outside of the
discipline. Where do remains such as those in the Cobb Collection fit into current
discussions about the ethical treatment of African-American skeletal remains and
artifacts? These discussions take place largely in the context of repatriation, protec-
tion, and reburial, which seems to fall outside of the purview of anatomical collec-
tions. However, I note elsewhere that the Cobb and New York African Burial Ground
collections coexisted for 10 years in the Cobb laboratory, during which time the
treatment of one influenced the other. Remains form the Cobb Collection were
included in laboratory tours focused on research on the New York African Burial
Ground remains. As a result, visitors learned that the Cobb laboratory housed the
remains of individuals representing over 250 years of biological and social history
of African-Americans. This included discussing the similarities and differences in
health, disease, and associated social and historical profiles. This is quite different
from the access members of the general public usually have to anatomical collec-
tions.10 Also in keeping with a decolonized approach to scientific study, repatriation
was built into the policy by way of honoring the wishes of next of kin to identify and
inter or cremate individuals in the collection (Blakey 1995, 15). As such, it reflects
another aspect of community engagement informed by participating in discussions
with indigenous people regarding NAGPRA and cultural anthropologists engaging
with living people (Blakey 2001; Blakey et al. 1994).
10
Public engagement with the Samuel Morton collection at the University of Pennsylvania also
stands as a rare exception. Janet Monge as curator of the collection promotes its use in programs
at the museum geared toward educating the general public about the history of American physical
anthropology, as well as the history of race in science. Monge also allows members of the general
public to engage the collection outside of formal programming (Monge 2008; Renschler 2008;
Renschler and Monge 2008).
Exploring this relationship would provide a means for a self-reflexive examina-

tion of the power relations between ourselves as researchers, the anatomical remains
we study, and issues of accountability and community engagement. How does
structural violence, as well as principles of repatriation and public engagement,
allow for considering different spatial and relational possibilities for anatomical
collections in the twenty-first century and beyond? If community collaboration is a
basic standard for critical and humanistic research practices on archaeological
remains, how might we establish mutually beneficial practices that include public
engagement for future research on remains such as those in the Cobb Collection?
Descendant communities are driving forces behind community activism associated
with the repatriation, reburial, and protection of African-American graves and cem-
eteries throughout the USA (Dunnavant 2013; Mack 2007).11 Might it be possible
to have descendant communities associated with anatomical collections? What are
the advantages, disadvantages, and/or possibilities for research models that involve
repatriating skeletal remains to identified family members? In addition, how might
connections with descendants help to establish an ethical clientele to whom
researchers are accountable – above and beyond our own scientific ethics (Blakey
and Rankin-Hill 2004)? The dual priorities of scientific rigor and social relevance
should lead to conceptualizations of “research progress” that view accountability
and communication between scientists and the public as a part of scientific rigor.12
This dual priority should also guide the articulation of anatomical remains with the
living populations to which they are connected. This will require multidisciplinary
engagement that allows for both a historical and cultural reading of collections such
as that I offer using Spillers’ conceptualization of body and flesh, as well as Wynter’s
concept of biocentricity. Arguably, we have yet to sufficiently address Michael
Blakey’s statement in his 2001 paper “Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora in
the Americas: Its Origins and Scope” that “Bioanthropology is the cornerstone of
African diasporic bioarchaeology, but the least informed by cultural and historical
literatures” (387).
Returning to the quote from McKittrick at the beginning of the paper, what other
bifurcations of analytical approaches to race, science, knowledge, and collaboration
on the part of underrepresented groups in the field need to be countered? What other
11
The following websites were established by members of descendant communities and their allies
to garner attention and support for the protection of African-American cemeteries in Virginia and
Washington, DC. This includes coordinating volunteer clean up days, political action, and ritual
commemoration of the burial sites. For instance, a ceremonial reading of the names of people buried
at what is now Walter Pierce Park is held annually:https://walterpierceparkcemeteries.org/ and
https://evergreencemeteryva.wordpress.com/. Efforts of the descendant community also garner
attention in local and national newspapers, such as the one below focused on Evergreen cemetery in
Richmond, VA: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/historic-black-cemeteries-
seeking-the-same-support-virginia-gives-confederates/2017/02/11/888b8ec0-de67-11e6-acdf-
14da832ae861_story.html?utm_term=.126ce5954a47.
12
This is exemplified in the ethical epistemology that Blakey developed for the New York African
Burial Ground research design (Blakey and Rankin Hill 2004; Blakey 2010).
44 R. Watkins
alternative modes of theorizing and writing against the grain of established scientific
authority need to be developed (Harrison 2016)?
The questions and points in this conclusion speak to the ways in which our current
research practices reflect racial underpinnings that we tend to only associate with
the racist past of the discipline. However, our justification of the static-yet-dynamic
positioning of remains as osteological subjects’ points to a racialized, scientific
examination of flesh rather than bodies. As such, space for people of color to exist
in the field as knowledge producers will continue to be obstructed by ideologies and
practices that naturalize [our] presence as research subjects. A greater commitment
to intellectual and political translations of our work is necessary for tying our work
to contemporary discussions about race, racism, and whiteness – not to mention
dismantling inequalities in the field upon which they are based.
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Barrett, A., & Blakey, M. (2011). Life histories of enslaved Africans in Colonial New York: A
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Chapter 4
More Than the Sum Total of Their Parts:
Restoring Identity by Recombining a Skeletal
Collection with Its Texts
Adam Netzer Zimmer
Contents
Introduction 49
Historical Background 51
Measuring Residential Segregation in the Huntington Collection 54
Indices of Segregation 56
Statistical Analysis 58
Results 59
Discussion 63
References 67
Introduction
In the book Great American City, sociologist Robert J. Sampson makes the argument
that a vast majority of social science has been limited by a focus on individual mea-
surements when discussing larger social phenomena (Sampson 2012). This is espe-
cially true, Sampson argues, when looking at the literature on so-called neighborhood
effects. Neighborhood effects are the measureable changes in one’s social and
health outcomes due to environmental factors like infrastructure, distance to social
services, crime rates, and other community- or demographic-specific factors
(Wilson 1987). The trouble with using individual measurements and then extrapo-
lating outwards is that this often leads to the conclusion that the environment is a
direct outgrowth of aggregated individualized factors, thereby suggesting that the
environment plays no role in shaping those individual outcomes.
In Sampson’s (2012) examination of urban poverty, he suggests that this type of
thinking often leads policy makers and the public to believe in the bootstrap method
of alleviating persistent poverty; it is the fault of individuals, rather than core social
A.N. Zimmer (*)

Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
Amherst 01003, MA, USA
e-mail: azimmer@anthro.umass.edu

50 A.N. Zimmer
and infrastructural problems, that supersede the individual. Rather, Sampson (2012)
argues that a dialectical model examining the effects of both the individual on the
environment and the environment on the individual is necessary.
An individual outcome analysis also deprives researchers of the ability to even
ask questions about larger social phenomena. I argue that this is the same in the
majority of purely pathological analyses of recent skeletal populations taken from
urban environments in the United States. By examining each individual on a one-
by-one basis and aggregating the findings to reach population-level conclusions, we
are missing some of the most important questions that such collections beg us to
ask. As an alternative to individual-based approaches, we must look at the changing
nature of the neighborhoods or, in the case of bioarchaeologists, the geographic
areas, where these individuals come from if we want to begin to explore this dialec-
tical model. By explicitly including a Sampsonian definition of neighborhood
effects in our analysis of recent skeletal populations, we greatly expand our toolbox
and therefore the questions we can ask about these populations. I attempt such an
analysis by examining what effects urban segregation had on the cadaver collection
process in New York City, using the George S. Huntington Skeletal Collection as an
example.
Following a strict definition of bioarchaeology, most of the analyses of anatomi-
cal skeletal collections by anthropologists are not bioarchaeological. This is because
no excavation has taken place, and as Buzon (2011) would argue, bioarchaeological
analysis requires inclusion of spatial dimensions of the mortuary context. However,
following Muller and Butler’s example (2017, this volume), I argue for a more
inclusive definition of bioarchaeology which sees places of cadaver collection as
that mortuary context. The Huntington Collection’s associated documents retain
that spatial context by relaying the exact location each cadaver was collected from.
This bioarchaeological approach, as opposed to one focused purely on trauma
and disease etiology, opens up new questions. This chapter reintroduces some of the
Sampsonian neighborhood effects back into the environment from which the indi-
viduals in the Huntington Collection lived through archival and census data integra-
tion. This reveals that New York City’s policy of cadaver collection, once purported
to opportunistically and indiscriminately take bodies of New York’s most marginal-
ized whenever available (Bernstein 2016), actually targeted predominantly black,
segregated neighborhoods regardless of social class. This is not to say that class
standing played no role. Rather, the “objective” nature of cadaver acquisition seems
to have had different criteria for acquiring white versus black and brown bodies.
Such differing criteria suggest that cadaver acquisition, dissection, and subsequent
curation were all used as tools of social control during a period of increasing fears
by New York City’s affluent white community about a growing and increasingly
mobile black populace. In particular, this “definitional violence” (Miller 1994)
transformed a heterogeneous group of black New Yorkers from active citizens to an
aggregate and sterile biological group.
4 More Than the Sum Total of Their Parts: Restoring Identity by Recombining… 51
Historical Background
Dr. George S. Huntington (1861–1927), a physician and professor of anatomy at

Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, founded the Huntington
Skeletal Collection in 1893 (Hrdlička 1937; Pearlstein 2015; Mann 2013). During
this period, Columbia and other major teaching hospitals around the United States
acquired the cadavers used for anatomy classes from poorhouses and city hospital
morgues. Most anatomy laws dictated that any human body that lay unclaimed for
a prescribed amount of time was to be transferred to the various teaching colleges
for dissections (Sappol 2002). Similarly, if a family did not have the economic
means for burial, they could apply for district disposal, whereby custody of the body
was transferred to the city and then redistributed to teaching hospitals for dissection
(Muller 2006). Like the Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection,1 the Robert J. Terry
Anatomical Skeletal Collection,2 and the W. Montague Cobb Human Skeletal
Collection,3 the skeletons in the Huntington Collection were first used as cadavers
for anatomical dissections in university medical courses. Dr. Huntington’s collec-
tion, however, began as a by-product of cadaver dissection rather than active collec-
tion of skeletal remains. According to his biography, written by his mentee and later
colleague Aleš Hrdlička (1869–1943), he “was more interested in research on the
soft parts, but he was fully aware of the prospective scientific value of the osteologi-
cal material and so continued its collection” (Hrdlička 1937:262).
Following Huntington’s death, Hrdlička had the collection transferred to
Washington, D.C., where it is located today at the Smithsonian Institution (Pearlstein
2015). The Huntington Collection is the largest of the four major American collec-
tions; it houses about 3070 partial skeletons (Hunt and Albanese 2005; Pearlstein
2015). The majority of individuals (75%) were male immigrants from Germany,
Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Scotland, and France who resided in New York City. Another
10% were US blacks (Quigley 2001). This drastic demographic bias, coupled with
a selective preference for acquiring bodies from hospitals aimed at services for the
poor, especially Bellevue Hospital and Almshouse Hospital (Ernst 1994), reveals
that a large number of cadavers did indeed come from some of the most marginal-
ized segments of New York City society.
To make the argument that acquisition criteria differed based on the race of those
acquired, we must first understand the historical trajectory of cadaver policy. In
England and the United States in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was a
common practice for “resurrection men” to visit the graves of the recently deceased
under cover of darkness and dig up the bodies of black citizens and white “indi-
gents” and then sell them to nearby medical schools for anatomy courses (Sappol
2002). This practice continued in New York City until the Doctors’ Mob of 1788
when a deceased white woman was discovered on a dissection table by her child
1
Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
2
Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
3
Howard University.
52 A.N. Zimmer
peering into the theater window (Wilf 1989). The ensuing mob threatened violent
action against the physicians and medical students of Columbia, prompting city
officials to quickly pass a law that prohibited grave robbing. According to Nystrom
(2014:769), however, “these laws did little to curb grave robbing and were effective
only in mollifying white middle- and upper-class fears and had little significance for
those groups generally targeted for such activity….” Public awareness about grave
robbing eventually resurged again, however, and medical schools were forced to
shift their acquisition focus away from grave robbing.
The faculty of these schools instead played an active role in creating laws that
discouraged social deviancy by threatening deviants with dissection (Nystrom
2014; Sappol 2002). This threat was meant to play upon the Christian belief that an
incomplete body was ineligible for the resurrection (Bynum 1995). The city could
revoke one’s chances of entering Heaven by violating the corporeal body. This
worked to keep the populace in line by placing the state as the final arbiter between
Earth and Heaven. In effect, defying city law was tantamount to defying Heavenly
law. In reality, this simply meant that the white middle- and upper-class populace
could feel safe from the prosectors’ knife knowing that “social degenerates” had
received their proper punishment in death while simultaneously fulfilling the city’s
need for bodies. But these indigents were not simply the poor and mentally unwell.
This category included African-Americans of every income level: “‘I rather believe,’
wrote a New York proponent of anatomy in 1788, ‘that the only subjects procured
for dissection are the productions of Africa or their descendents [sic] ...and if those
characters are the only subjects of dissection, surely no person can object’” (cited in
Wilf 1989:211). In framing the need for bodies in this way, doctors and dissection
proponents alike were able to continue procuring bodies without arousing the ire of
New York City’s elite.
The discourse eventually shifted yet again when these deviant bodies could not
fill the medical schools’ growing need. Dissection could act as a buffer against
social deviance, but there was such a need for bodies that dissection had to be
reframed as a service to the state. Individuals could serve the state and science by
donating their body to help the greater good of mankind, an argument that is still
used today (Sappol 2002). But this was not a particularly effective campaign.
Pearlstein (2015) relays that at this point many families of low economic status in
New York City were actually bullied into “donating” their relatives’ bodies.
Resurrection men and morgue operators would sit with families in the hospital wait-
ing rooms and immediately pounce upon them on the news of their relative’s death.
If they would not give up the body of their relative willingly, these men would
threaten the families with unspecified legal action. This practice became so com-
mon that the New York coroner’s office had to launch a formal investigation about
the practice in 1914:
Dr. Timothy D. Lehane, Coroner’s physician, […] made that charge. He was unable to give
specific cases in either [Bellevue or Harlem Hospital] but swore it was almost a daily occur-
rence. “‘We will send for the coroners and the body will be cut in mince-meat’ is the usual
form of the threat,” Lehane testified. “I have met in the ante rooms of these two institutions
hundreds of weeping relatives, powerless to save their dead kinsfolk from the dissecting
table.” (World 1914)
The combination of targeting black graves, along with this type of extreme coer-
cion, resulted in a disproportionate number of black bodies to white bodies in dis-
section theaters. This is confirmed by a comparison of the black-to-white population
ratio of Manhattan in 1910 (60,534–2,331,542 or 0.0267) to the racially labeled
remains in the Huntington Collection (207–1508 or 0.137) (National Historical
Geographic Information System 2011). This means that, for those remains that can
be positively identified with comparison to death records, blacks are overrepre-
sented in the Huntington Collection by over six times compared to the city
population.
It should be noted that another skeletal collection, that of Walter Montague
Cobb (1906–1990),4 differs from the other US collections in many respects. Though
Cobb, a renowned African-American physician, acquired bodies via similar pro-
cesses as the other collectors, he initiated his project with the main intention of
combating the racist anthropological science of the early twentieth century that
began the other skeletal collections in the first place (Muller 2006; Watkins 2007).
In particular, Cobb wished to produce a collection that could act as a counter narra-
tive to the racial hierarchies proposed by biological anthropologists such as Aleš
Hrdlička, whom he worked for while assembling a different collection (Rankin-Hill
and Blakey 1994). Hrdlička saw anthropology and, by extension, the skeletal collec-
tions utilized by anthropologists, as having “practical application through racial
eugenics, directed at engineering the biology and social progress of American soci-
ety” (Rankin-Hill and Blakey 1994:77, see also Hrdlička 1921). Cobb’s strategy to
combat this was to create a skeletal assemblage that rivaled the others in size, but
which predominantly focused on biological variation in African-American individ-
uals (Muller 2006; Watkins 2007).
It is important to note how these collections were formed because it demon-
strates that the collectors were not passively receiving bodies. Some collectors took
an active role in targeting the bodies of the poor. Newspapers of the time are awash
in stories of bodies going missing and clandestine transfers in backrooms of hospi-
tals. Such headlines read, “INDIANAPOLIS STIRRED OVER THE
DESECRATION OF GRAVES: Robbers Aided and Abetted by Physicians” (Journal
1902) and “A GRAVE UNDER GUARD: Fears that a Body Will Be Stolen for
Dissection” (Times 1896). One story that dominated headlines for years was that of
New York City’s Bellevue Hospital morgue keeper Albert White, who testified to
trafficking hundreds of bodies to and from Bellevue Hospital for dissection pur-
poses (Argus 1896; Eagle 1897; Tribune 1901). The same man testified decades
earlier to the New York Senate about taking bodies from institutions on Ward’s and
Blackwell’s Islands to Bellevue Hospital for similar purposes. Even worse, his
assistant keeper was arrested for sexual misconduct with the corpses (Documents of
the Senate of the State of New York. Ninety-Ninth Session 1876). By examining the
Howard University.
4
54 A.N. Zimmer
remains in the Huntington Skeletal Collection, the collection that acted as the model
for all the others, we can see how the scientific racism Cobb acted against was made
manifest in the very ways the remains were collected and curated.
easuring Residential Segregation in the Huntington

M
Collection
In the case of New York City, race superseded the characteristics that cadaver col-
lection laws meant to target, namely, class, “indigency,” and criminal status. This
mapping project shows that when resurrection men and medical professionals
acquired black and brown bodies, they targeted those neighborhoods that were most
isolated from the white sections of New York. If the laws truly took bodies of the
marginalized indiscriminately, acquisition patterns for black and white bodies
should be equitably distributed across the city, showing no particular trends when
accounting for race. One could expect the highest numbers of bodies to come from
neighborhoods that are predominantly poor, e.g., where those defined as social indi-
gents resided, and should bear little relation to racial residential segregation, unless
of course there is a fixed correlation between black neighborhoods and poverty.
Instead, it appears that economic standing did play a large role in acquiring white
bodies, but was of much less importance for acquiring black bodies. This can be
seen when examining the correlation between neighborhood income level and level
of segregation.
It is important to note that the term black is used throughout this paper as opposed
to African-American or other racial terms commonly deployed in skeletal analysis
because of the catchall term “Negro” that was used by Huntington, Aleš Hrdlička,
and city coroners when labeling the bones and associated documents in the collec-
tion. By using the racial terms inscribed on the bones by the aforementioned actors,
I am attempting to look at the effects racialization of black and brown bodies had
on determining their final disposition. Building off of Smay and Armelagos (2000)
and Gravlee et al. (2005), I argue here that racialization is a main explanatory factor
and a not arbitrarily defined biological indicator of race.
The Huntington Collection is divided into three primary categories: native-born
European Americans labeled as “USA,” European immigrants labeled with their
country of birth, and African-Americans catalogued as “US Negro.” Two-hundred
six individuals labeled as “Black” in the Smithsonian’s records were initially
selected for analysis, but 13 were excluded because they lacked comparative histori-
cal documentation, consisted of only an empty box, and/or the elements themselves
had acquisition labels indicating they belonged to another demographic category.
Of the 193 black individuals examined, 63 were identified as female and 130 were
identified as male. Females range in age at death from 17 to 85 years, with a mean
age at death of 35. Males range in age at death from 18 to 80 years, with a mean age
Table 4.1 Mapping materials used and their sources

Resource Year of
Resource type creation Source
“Manhattan, 1910 census Historical 1910 Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal
tabulation tracts” map Map Division, the New York Public
Library
“Compilation of average annual Historical 1919 Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal
expenditure per family prepared map Map division, the New York Public
by New York University Bureau Library
of Business Research”
“Atlas of the borough of Historical 1923 Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal
Manhattan, City of New York. insurance Map Division, the New York Public
Desk and library edition” atlas Library
Huntington Collection USNM Database 1895– Smithsonian Museum of Natural
collection numbers and 1920 History, Museum Support Center
addresses
Census of 1910, demographic Database 1910 Minnesota Population Center.
information for the borough of National Historical Geographic
Manhattan Information System: Version 2.0.
Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota 2011
at death of 38. Years of birth for females range from 1813 to 1890. Years of birth for
males range from 1817 to 1901.
Basic demographic data (e.g., age, sex, place of death) exist for most individuals
within the collection. To eliminate observer bias, age and sex were established
blindly for each individual using bioarchaeological standards (Buikstra and
Ubelaker 1994). Only after skeletal profiles were completed were the results com-
pared to the available demographic information.
The utilization of the demographic information here is based on a method by
Pearlstein (2015) and is as follows: wherever possible, the name, age, and date of
death listed in the Smithsonian’s records were compared to the NYC Death Index,
and the listed age was adjusted to be consistent with the Death Index if the discrep-
ancy was 5 years or less. This was then compared to the age range determined from
skeletal markers for confirmation. When larger discrepancies occurred between
listed age at death and the age at death given by the NYC Death Index, the age range
ascertained using skeletal markers was compared to both separately. This occurred
in two cases, and in both cases, the skeletal markers indicated an age range contain-
ing the age listed in the NYC Death Index. All other remains were assumed to be
associated with the correct set of biohistorical data.
Analysis was conducted primarily in ESRI’s ArcGIS, utilizing a variety of his-
torical materials and maps. Table 4.1 shows the materials used and their sources:
The map “Manhattan, 1910 census tabulation tracts” was georeferenced as a
base map and was referenced on a current OpenStreetMap base map of Manhattan.
Following this, the street address information for individuals contained within the
Huntington Collection were geocoded to the nearest current street address on this
56 A.N. Zimmer
same OpenStreetMap base map. Because of redevelopment of the island since the
cadavers were acquired, many addresses no longer exist on modern maps and could
not be geocoded via this method. To rectify this, various plates containing fire insur-
ance maps from the “Atlas of the Borough of Manhattan” were also georeferenced
to the OpenStreetMap base map. These fire insurance maps include individual
house numbers for every individual dwelling and place of business within Manhattan
and so proved effective in approximating street addresses that are no longer in exis-
tence. Addresses that could not be geocoded using the first method were then placed
on the maps using this method. Each address was then individually checked for
accuracy to ensure correct placement into a census tract. Address discrepancies
were found between the fire insurance maps and the OpenStreetMap base map.
When this occurred, the addresses shown on the historical maps were used.
Geocoding revealed eight individuals centered at the Colored Home and Hospital,
matching their death record, so these eight were excluded from spatial analysis, as
this was likely not the home address of those individuals. Numerous individuals
were found to reside off of the island of Manhattan, and these were excluded as well
because of a lack of available mapping data outside of the island.
The “Compilation of Average Annual Expenditure per Family prepared by
New York University Bureau of Business Research” map was then georeferenced to
the OpenStreetMap base map. Points at the four corners of Central Park and at least
eight street intersections in both the northern, southern, eastern, and western halves
of Manhattan (for a total of 36 points) were chosen as reference points between the
two maps. This map shows on a block by block level the average annual expenditure
of families residing within that block during the 1919 census year. The categorical
variable “tract income level” was then assigned to each census tract using the cate-
gories given on the map: “poor,” “lower middle,” “upper middle,” “good,” “purple
(ultra),” and “gold (ultra).” The categories of “good,” “purple (ultra),” and “gold
(ultra)” were then recombined into an aggregate category of “upper class.” In many
cases, a mix of these categories characterized a tract. If an income level covered 50+
percent of a tract, the majority level was selected as the level for the tract. If a major-
ity could not be determined, the tract was assigned as “mixed” and excluded from
analysis. There are four cases where coverage was split evenly between “lower
middle” and “upper middle,” and these were combined into the category of “mixed
middle.” The three tracts containing Blackwell’s Island (now called Roosevelt
Island), Randall’s Island, and Ward’s Island were excluded from this income analy-
sis, as inmates at the various hospitals on these islands were not evaluated for yearly
expenditure.
Indices of Segregation
Three of the most common measures of racial residential segregation, the index of
dissimilarity, interaction index, and isolation index, were selected for computation
within this study. Although all communities of color tend to score highly on one or
more of these measures in cities today, only black communities score highly on every
dimension with consistency (Massey and Denton 1989). By determining these values
for every census tract within New York City at a time when many of the Huntington
individuals were collected and resituating those individuals into their census tracts, we
can begin to understand the role segregation played in the collection process.
Demographic values used in the calculation of each index were obtained through
Minnesota Population Center’s National Historical Geographic Information System:
Version 2.0 (National Historical Geographic Information System 2011).
The index of dissimilarity (D) used in this paper, derived from Iceland et al.
(2002), is defined as:
Formula 4.1 Index of dissimilarity. n = number of tracts, wi = number of whites in
tract i, WT = number of whites in the city, bi = number of blacks in tract i, BT = num-
ber of blacks in the city
1 i =1 wi b
D= ∑ − i
2 n WT BT
(4.1)

The index of dissimilarity measures a given areal unit’s demographic divergence
from the city as a whole. It can also be defined as the proportion of a given demo-
graphic category that would have to move from each given tract if each tract were to
exactly match the demographics of the city. The dissimilarity value for each tract
was computed using all values to the right of the summation symbol and then
summed accordingly to obtain the index of dissimilarity. The index ranges from 0.0,
indicating complete integration of the city, to 1.0, indicating complete segregation.
The interaction index (Bbw) used in this paper, derived from Iceland et al. (2002),
is defined as:
Formula 4.2 Interaction index. n = number of tracts or spatial units, niw = number
of whites in tract i, ni = total population of tract i, nib = number of blacks in tract i,
NB = number of blacks in the city
i =1
 n  n 
Bbw = ∑  ib   iw  (4.2)
n  N B   ni 

The interaction index “measures the exposure of minority group members to
members of the majority group as the minority-weighted average of the majority
proportion of the population in each areal unit” (Iceland et al. 2002:119). It can also
be defined as the likelihood that a member of a minority group will interact with a
member of the majority group. As only two groups were included in this calcula-
tion, this index sums to 1.0 with lower indices indicating greater segregation. In
addition, white was substituted for black and black for white so as to measure the
likelihood of majority group members interacting with minority group members in
a given tract. It is important to note that this substitution does not in most cases
produce a reciprocal result as each group’s proportion of the city’s population as a
58 A.N. Zimmer
whole alters the value for a “typical” white or black New Yorker. The interaction
value for each tract was computed using all values to the right of the summation
symbol and then summed accordingly to obtain the interaction index.
The isolation index (I) used in this paper, derived from Iceland et al. (2002), is
defined as:
Formula 4.3 Isolation index. n = number of tracts, niw = number of whites in tract
i, ni = total population of tract i, nib = number of blacks in tract i, NB = number of
blacks in the city
n 
 n  n 
I = ∑   ib   ib  (4.3)
 N B   ni
i =1   
The isolation index measures the minority-weighted average of the minority pro-
portion in each area or the likelihood that a group member shares a given areal unit
with another member of that same group. As above, white was substituted for black
and black for white to compute the index for white New Yorkers as well. This index
sums to 1.0 when using two groups, with higher values indicating greater levels of
segregation. The isolation value for black residents for each tract was computed
using all values to the right of the summation symbol and then summed accordingly
to obtain the isolation index.
After all indices and values were computed for each tract using the census demo-
graphic information, these values were assigned to the corresponding tracts for
analysis. All indices were then recoded as categorical variables grouped by value,
and the results were imported into the ArcGIS program for visual representation.
Statistical Analysis
One-way ANOVAs for statistically significant differences between group means of

the number of black individuals in the collection from each tract were conducted for
dissimilarity values, isolation values for black residents, and black/white interac-
tion values, in addition to group means of the number of individuals sorted by tract
income level.
The four levels for dissimilarity values were A (≥ 0.01), B (<0.01 and ≥ 0.001),
C (<0.001 and ≥ 0.0001), and D (< 0.0001). The five levels for black/white interac-
tion values were A (≥0.01), B (<0.01 and ≥ 0.001), C (<0.001 and ≥ 0.0001), D
(<0.0001 and > 0), and E (=0). The seven levels for isolation values for black resi-
dents were A (≥ 0.01), B (<0.01 and ≥ 0.001), C (<0.001 and ≥ 0.0001), D
(<0.0001 and ≥ 1.0E-5), E (<1.0E-5 and ≥ 1.0E-6), F (<1.0E-6 and ≥ 1.0E-7),
and G (<1.0E-7). One-way ANOVAs for statistically significant differences between
group means of the number of black individuals in the collection from each tract
were conducted for differing tract income levels. This test was also performed for
statistically significant differences between group means of the number of white

individuals in the collection from each tract. The five tract income levels analyzed
were upper class, upper middle class, mixed middle class, lower middle class, and
poor. Hypothesis testings for all ANOVA tests were as follows:
• H0: μ1 = μ2 = μ3 ... = μk (There is no significant difference between group means).
• H1: Means are not all equal.
Tukey’s HSD post hoc test for significant differences between group means was
then conducted for all cases where ANOVA testing revealed significant p-values
(<0.05). Using this test, a third hypothesis was added for both tests of the number of
individuals collected by income level.
• H2: The group mean for “poor” tracts will significantly differ from group means
for other income levels.
Results
Index of Dissimilarity for the City of New York
When summed, the dissimilarity values for all tracts in New York result in a dissimi-
larity index of D = 0.66. In other words, 66% of the black and white residents of
New York in 1910 would have to move from their tract if each tract were to match
the black/white ratio of the city as a whole. A dissimilarity index of 60 or above is
considered very high. The dissimilarity index for New York City as of the 2010
census was D = 0.814, indicating an approximately 15% increase from 1910 to 2010
(US2010). See Fig. 4.1 for a visual representation of the results of dissimilarity
indices’ calculation.
Interaction Index for the City of New York
When summed, the black/white interaction values for all tracts in New York result
in a black/white interaction index of Bbw = 0.77. In other words, a black resident of
New York City in 1910 had a likelihood of 77% of sharing their tract with white
individuals. Conversely, the white/black interaction index in 1910 was Wwb = 0.02.
In other words, a white resident of New York City in 1910 had a 2% likelihood of
sharing their tract with black individuals. The black/white interaction index for
New York City as of the 2010 census was Bbw = 0.102, indicating an approximately
67% decrease from 1910 to 2010 (US2010). The white/black interaction index for
New York City as of the 2010 census was Wwb = 0.072, indicating an approximately
5% increase from 1910 to 2010 (US2010).
60 A.N. Zimmer
Fig. 4.1 Manhattan census tracts colored by dissimilarity value (d.v.) and racial overrepresenta-
tion. A high dissimilarity value indicates a highly segregated tract, and a lower dissimilarity value
indicates a more integrated tract
Isolation Index for the City of New York
When summed, the isolation values for black residents for all tracts in New York
result in a black isolation index of I = 0.22. In other words, a black resident of
New York City in 1910 had a likelihood of 22% of sharing their tract with other
black individuals. Conversely, the white isolation index in 1910 was I = 0.97. In
other words, a white resident of New York City in 1910 had a 97% likelihood of
sharing their tract with other white individuals. The black isolation index for New
York City as of the 2010 census was I = 0.575, indicating an approximately 35%
increase from 1910 to 2010 (US2010). The white isolation index for New York City
as of the 2010 census was I = 0.624, indicating an approximately 35% decrease
from 1910 to 2010 (US2010).
Effect of Tract Dissimilarity Value on the Number of Black

Individuals Collected
There was a significant effect of the tracts’ dissimilarity values on the number of
black individuals collected from each tract at the p < 0.05 level for the conditions
[F(3213) = 9.507, p = 6.4E-06]. As a result, the null hypothesis is rejected for this
test. Tukey’s HSD tests were conducted on all possible pairwise group mean con-
trasts. The following pairs of groups were found to be significantly different
(p < 0.05): groups A (high dissimilarity: M = 1.281, SD = 1.853) and B (medium
low dissimilarity: M = 0.391, SD = 1.050), groups A and C (medium low dissimilar-
ity: M = 0.190, SD = 0.455), and groups A and D (low dissimilarity: M = <0.000,
SD = <0.000). This can be restated as individuals taken into the Huntington
Collection come from tracts with the highest dissimilarity values at rates statisti-
cally higher than any of the other tract dissimilarity values.
ffect of Tract Interaction Values for Black Residents

E
on the Number of Black Individuals Collected
There was a significant effect of the tracts’ black/white interaction values on the
number of black individuals collected from each tract at the p < 0.05 level for the
conditions [F(4212) = 15.54, p = 3.64E-11]. As a result, the null hypothesis is
rejected for this test. Tukey’s HSD tests were conducted on all possible pairwise
group mean contrasts. The following pairs of groups were found to be significantly
different (p < 0.05): groups A (high interaction: M = 1.950, SD = 2.064) and B
(medium high interaction: M = 0.411, SD = 0.928), groups A and C (medium interac-
tion: M = 0.185, SD = 0.464), groups A and D (medium low interaction: M = 0. 44,
SD = 1.577), and groups A and E (low interaction: M = 0.100, SD = 0.316). This can
be restated as individuals taken into the Huntington Collection come from tracts with
the highest black/white interaction values at rates statistically higher than any of the
other tract black/white interaction values.
62 A.N. Zimmer
ffect of Tract Isolation Values for Black Residents

E
on the Number of Individuals Collected
There was a significant effect of the tracts’ isolation value for black residents on the
number of black individuals collected from each tract at the p < 0.05 level for the
conditions [F(6210) = 20.7, p = <2E-16]. As a result, the null hypothesis is rejected
for this test. Tukey’s HSD tests were conducted on all possible pairwise group mean
contrasts. The following pairs of groups were found to be significantly different
(p < 0.05): groups A (≥ 0.01: M = 3.000, SD = 1.155) and C (<0.001 and ≥ 0.0001:
M = 0.583, SD = 0.974), groups A and D (<0.0001 and ≥ 1.0E-5: M = 0.219,
SD = 0.701), groups A and E (<1.0E-5 and ≥ 1.0E-6: M = 0.278, SD = 0.513),
groups A and F (<1.0E-6 and ≥ 1.0E-7: M = 0.233, SD = 0.568), groups A and G
(<1.0E-7: M = 0.273, SD = 1.227), groups B and C, groups B and D, groups B and
E, groups B and F, and groups B and G. This can be restated as individuals taken
into the Huntington Collection come from tracts with the highest and second high-
est isolation values for black residents at rates statistically higher than any of the
other tract isolation values for black residents.
ffect of Tract Income on the Number of Black Individuals

E
Collected
There was a weak effect of the tracts’ income levels on the number of black indi-
viduals collected from each tract at the p < 0.05 level for the conditions
[F(4202) = 3.74, p = 0.00586]. As a result, the null hypothesis is rejected for this
(p < 0.05): groups A (upper class: M = 0. 33, SD = 0.822) and B (upper middle class:
M = 1.026, SD = 1.739), groups B and D (lower middle class: M = 0.321, SD = 0.850),
and groups B and E (poor: M = 0.2 66, SD = 0.583). This can be restated as black
individuals taken into the Huntington Collection come from upper middle-class
tracts at rates weakly statistically higher than any of the other tract income levels. In
this test, H2 is rejected. There is no statistically significant difference between the
numbers of black individuals coming from poor tracts than any other tract value.
ffect of Tract Income on the Number of White Individuals

E
Collected
There was a significant effect of the tracts’ income levels on the number of white
individuals collected from each tract at the p < 0.05 level for the conditions
[F(4202) = 7.269, p = 1.73E-05]. As a result, the null hypothesis is rejected for this
Table 4.2 The “four peculiar institutions” designed to define, confine, and control black Americans
and their respective time periods
Form of Resulting stigmatized
“Peculiar institution” labor Core of economy social type
Slavery (1619–1865) Unfree fixed Plantation Captive African
labor
Jim Crow (south, Free fixed Agrarian and extractive Sharecropper
1865–1965) labor
Ghetto (north, 1915–1968) Free mobile Segmented industrial Menial worker
labor manufacturing
Hyperghetto and prison Fixed surplus Polarized postindustrial Welfare recipient and
(1965 to current) labor services criminal
Adapted from Wacquant (2001)
(p < 0.05): groups A (upper class: M = 0. 33 , SD = 0.822) and E (poor: M = 0.2 66,
SD = 0.583), groups B (upper middle class: M = 1.026, SD = 1.739) and E, and
group D (lower middle class: M = 0.340, SD = 0.706). H2 is not rejected for this
case. There is a statistically significant difference between the numbers of white
individuals coming from poor tracts than any other tract value.
Discussion
These results indicate that criteria differed for the neighborhoods that were fre-
quented by resurrection men. While resurrection men would go into neighborhoods
that were poor and white to acquire bodies, seeming to avoid middle-class or afflu-
ent white neighborhoods, the income level of black neighborhoods had little to no
bearing on their decisions. This should come to little surprise, given the well-
documented aggressions against predominantly black neighborhoods by white resi-
dents in northern US cities (Du Bois and Bobo 2014; Pryor 2016). The reintroduction
of historical sociological studies of American segregation bolsters this argument
(Logan et al. 2015). As Wacquant (2001) argues, the various stages leading to mod-
ern American hypersegregation happened as a series of institutions designed to
deliberately define, confine, and control black Americans (Table 4.2). Labor extrac-
tion and social ostracization were the particular goals of the first three eras. After the
Civil War ended and as antiblack violence of the Jim Crow South intensified, many
black Americans moved north to join the new, growing black proletariat and were
met with myriad barriers to social and economic equality. The period of time in
which the majority of the Huntington Anatomical Collection was amassed, 1893–
1921, is encased in this particular social framework of Wacquant’s second and third
stages.
64 A.N. Zimmer
Although acts of overt physical violence against New York City’s black neigh-
borhoods have been documented, I argue that a subtler form of violence, defini-
tional violence, was enacted against the black community via the collection process
itself. One of the goals of this type of cultural violence is defining the parameters of
a certain population so as to better enable control of that population (Miller 1994;
Brown-Pérez 2012).
The definitional violence enacted here is twofold. One is the redefining of black
bodies from dynamic, heterogeneous, social actors to Queteletic models. In his
most well-known work, “Sur l’homme,” Quetelet established quantitative standards
of human measurement as representative of individuals’ biographies (1835). By
combining these data, the “average man” could be conceptualized, and any indi-
vidual could be assessed as existing solely as their variance from this fictional aver-
age. “Thus conceived, the ‘average man’ constituted an ideal, not only of social
health, but of social stability and of beauty” (Sekula 1986:22).
For the Huntington Collection, when race was figured into the equation, each
person was a deviation from the “true” form of their respective race. This is further
illuminated in the way in which a person became part of the collection. After the
cadavers of black individuals were eviscerated and dissected in anatomical courses,
they were further stripped of any remaining soft tissue. During dissection, which
leaves many muscles in place, the anatomists and students may have recognized
some semblance of human life that once existed for each individual. But through the
dissection process and subsequent maceration, we see the individual being con-
verted to a purely biological specimen.
However, the individuals here also had the biographical details of the person’s
life attached to them. Like evisceration and maceration of the soft tissues, the bio-
graphical details had to be systematically stripped away if researchers were to
reduce each person to only their base demographic data. This is precisely what we
see with the Hamann-Todd, Terry, and Huntington collections. The curators, though
capable of preserving records of each person’s active participation in daily life as
Cobb did with his collection, seemed to reject these records. We can surmise this
because none of these other collections retain anything approximating the docu-
mentary record associated with the Cobb collection. This rejection of such bio-
graphical details would have enabled researchers to detach themselves from the life
of the individual, making the examination of the elements merely representations of
a given race, sex, age, and perhaps occupation. In essence, the collections as a whole
were meant to mirror Quetelet’s “perfect man” for a given location, making each
individual specimen a mere variance from this model. Even today with many papers
published utilizing these collections, focus is mainly on disease etiologies or struc-
tural morphologies of certain bony features. It becomes immediately evident that
any consideration of the lives hidden in the collections is not taken into consideration.
Instead, they truly are seen as representations of the deviations within a certain age
bracket or race or as manifestations of a given pathology. These publications are
performing definitional violence.
Another form of definitional violence is evident in the ways that anatomists and
curators redefined all people of color into the aggregate category of Negro. Racial
formation refers to the dialectical relationship by which sociocultural, political, and

economic forces work to form and solidify racial categories and are then reformed
by the very categories created (Omi and Winant 1994). The cyclical nature of this
relationship creates an almost “common sense” aspect of race, where we see that it
has real implications for each racial category, while it simultaneously creates even
more disparities between those categories. As such, racial ideology serves a real
purpose for maintaining the status quo within the United States and so is continu-
ously defended by those in power and even by those not in power. By defining any
person of color residing within New York City at the time as belonging to the catch-
all category of “Negro” while offering many labelling options for those of European
ancestry, Hrdlička (and/or the other curators) affirmed the racial supremacy of
European Americans and continued the idea that white was the norm and anyone
who was not white was a biological deviation.
By continuing to use race uncritically as an independent variable in health dis-
parity analysis, bioarchaeologists have continued to support the idea that race is a
set of biologically discrete categories (Armelagos and Goodman 1998). In light of
this, I am advocating for an expansion of Sampsonian-type analyses of race in these
collections rather than individual-level, Queteletic models. As I have argued, the
racial identifiers associated with the Huntington Skeletal Collection (and other US
skeletal collections) do not define race, but rather the very social process of racial-
ization. It is racialization and not race itself that results in the many health dispari-
ties that researchers have ascertained.
Most examinations of social factors evidenced in archives have occurred within
the fields of history and bioethics, instead of biological anthropology (for such
examinations, see Sappol 2002; Skloot and Turpin 2010; Washington 2006). Despite
this, a small cohort of “social bioarchaeologists” have used a biocultural model to
examine these questions (e.g., see Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Martin et al.
2013a). A biocultural model insists that social factors play a key role in human exis-
tence. It also states that our biology affects the way we interact with each other and
how we as a species react to social pressures (Goodman and Leatherman 1998).
Some bioarchaeologists have extended this so as to include complex social theories
such as structural violence into their understandings of burial practices, violence
patterns, and even intersections with repatriation and reparation efforts (Bauer-
Clapp and Pérez 2014). A recent book mobilizes the social bioarchaeologist model
specifically to examine American medical dissections and the skeletal collections
that resulted from them (Nystrom 2016). Nystrom (2016) and others trace the his-
tory of American medical schools targeting specific populations for dissection and
demonstrate the various forms of violence evident from the skeletons excavated.
Their goal is to resurrect the memories of who was placed in these collections and
why and to ask what the implications are of continuing to violate these individuals
after death.
An even smaller cohort of bioarchaeologists is combining ethical considerations,
historiography, and biological examinations to ask these questions in their own
work (e.g., see Bauer-Clapp and Pérez 2014; de la Cova 2011; Geller 2016; Martin
et al. 2013a, b; Martin and Harrod 2015; Muller et al. 2016; Nystrom 2014;
66 A.N. Zimmer
Pearlstein 2015; Stone 2012; Watkins 2012; Watkins and Muller 2015; Zuckerman
et al. 2014). An article by Watkins and Muller published in the American Journal of
Human Biology (2015) exemplifies this approach. Watkins and Muller call for
researchers working with the Cobb human archive to make use of the extensive
documentary collection associated with the skeletal remains. They state that a
humanistic study of biology (one based on the recognition of social and biological
lives) of the individuals within the skeletal collections must be predicated on two
principles:
1. Scientific investigation is not an objective or passive practice. Therefore, research
must involve critical reflection upon the subject position of the researcher, as
well as how established (canonical) standards for intellectual rigor reflect socially
embedded ways of knowing and understanding the world.
2. The project of engaging in socially relevant and publically accessible research
requires competence with social justice issues, as well as past and present schol-
arship addressing those issues. This includes research within and outside of
one’s discipline that perhaps falls outside established cannons (Watkins and
Muller 2015:41).
These principles, manifested through research methodologies already developed
by other social science fields, provide the foundation of what we can understand as
the resistance to a purely Queteletic approach to the Hamann-Todd, Terry, and
Huntington collections. When these collections were created, there was a clear
social divide between researcher and subject. Though this divide existed in life,
curators widened the chasm by literally and figuratively stripping cadavers of ele-
ments that might spark memories of connection to researchers.
Watkins and Muller (2015) echo arguments made over a decade ago by Armelagos
and Van Gerven when they pressed for “reclaiming physical anthropology as anthro-
pology” (2003). The field of biological anthropology seems to be changing toward
the recognition of our own complicity in violent acts against the subject, but one
could argue that this is only occurring for living subjects. The attitude toward the
dead is predominantly summarized as, “They’re dead. What more can we do?” But
by rejecting an aggregated-individual model, we can instead turn to questions of the
power dynamics that shaped these collections. With a resurgence in bioarchaeolo-
gists’ and human biologists’ work being claimed as evidence of racial superiority
(e.g., see Gazette 2016), it is more imperative than ever that we reexamine the very
questions we ask.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Pamela Stone for inviting me to publish this research
as a part of this volume and my doctoral committee of Dr. Ventura Pérez, Dr. Amanda Walker
Johnson, Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, and Dr. Wenona Rymond-Richmond for guiding this
research. I would also like to thank the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for allowing me
to conduct research on the Huntington Collection, in particular Dr. David Hunt and Dr. Kristen
Pearlstein for lending so much of their time and expertise to helping me navigate the collection.
Finally, my thanks go out to those individuals currently resting in the Smithsonian’s collections.
This material is based, in part, upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1451512.
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Chapter 5
At the Intersections of Race, Poverty, Gender,
and Science: A Museum Mortuary
for Twentieth Century Fetuses and Infants
Jennifer L. Muller and Margaret S. Butler
Contents
Introduction 71
Bioarchaeology and Fetal and Infant Collection 73
The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection 74
The Sociopolitical Value of Fetal and Infant Remains 76
The Axes of Gender, Poverty, and Race 82
Conclusion 84
References 86
Introduction
There is a significant relationship between bioarchaeological research and skeletal

collections with many bioarchaeologists receiving education on human osteology
from anatomical and documented skeletal collections. Therefore, it is ironic that the
same level of interrogation found in bioarchaeological research has only recently
been applied to non-archaeologically derived skeletal collections (e.g., de la Cova
2010, 2012; Hunt and Albanese 2005; Muller 2006; Pearlstein 2015; Watkins 2003;
Watkins and Muller 2015), with the early work of W. Montague Cobb as a notable
exception. Human dissection and subsequent collection for the advancement of
scientific and medical knowledge have been practiced for hundreds of years, lead-
ing to the creation of human skeletal collections around the world. Many can be
found in the United States and continue to be used today for the education of anthro-
pologists, medical doctors, and clinicians. They remain an important source of
J.L. Muller (*)

Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
e-mail: jlmuller@ithaca.edu
M.S. Butler
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
e-mail: margaretbutler2023@u.northwestern.edu

72 J.L. Muller and M.S. Butler
research for anthropologists and those scholars interested in the history of science
and medicine.
Bioarchaeologists are increasingly invested in the reconstruction of cultural
identities and lived experiences through the complex and careful contextualization of
skeletal remains. This includes investigations of the body politic in which the body
is a medium through which power relations are performed. Vital to these interpreta-
tions is the mortuary context which may provide evidence for an individual’s social
roles based on burial location, type, position, and grave goods (Martin et al. 2013).
However, mortuary treatments are not confined to burial deposition but include those
practices in which bodies have been prepared, altered, macerated, dissected, and/or
mounted and stored in museums and other educational institutions. Bioarchaeological
research of mortuary contexts that consist of drawers in laboratories and university
basements may add significantly to our understanding of the social identities and
values assigned, in life and in death, to those dissected and collected.
The majority of scholarly research associated with human cadavers and skeletons
in anatomical education focuses on the use of adults and more specifically of men
(Dittmar and Mitchell 2016). As asserted by Dittmar and Mitchell (2016), the signifi-
cance of young children, in particular fetuses and infants, in anatomical education is
underrepresented in the literature. The absence of this work within bioarchaeology
may be largely attributed to the lack of fetal and infant anatomical “specimens” in the
archaeological record. However, many skeletal remains of fetuses and infants exist as
invisible collections – hidden from view in our educational institutions.
In order to study human growth and development, embryos, fetuses, and infants
were amassed into huge collections in the United States during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. While much of these activities focused on the collection of
pristine, wholly intact bodies of embryos and fetuses, the skeletal remains of fetuses
with significant ossification were also procured for research. This chapter addresses
the Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History as
the mortuary context for 112 infants and fetuses. The contextualization of this cur-
rent deposition, the condition of the skeletal remains, and the associated documen-
tary archive reveal the complex relationships among the fetal collection, the women
who carried them, and the scientists and scholars who procured them.
The contributions of fetal collection to the advancement of science are overwhelm-
ing. However, these contributions do not negate the structural violence that led to their
acquisition – the normalized procurement of these fetuses and infants from women
whom society deemed as less than – impoverished and often women of color. The
erasure of women in research focusing on fetal cadaver use and skeletal collection
further naturalizes the fetus as an entity separate from its mother. The fetal “speci-
men” was removed from the woman’s body. Therefore, her self-ascribed and/or
assigned social identities often resulted in the fetus’s laboratory and subsequent
museum mortuary. We may hypothesize that similar to other US-documented osteo-
logical collections, the majority of fetal and infant remains in the Johns Hopkins Fetal
Collection are from marginalized peoples. Intersectionality is used here as a tool for
exploring the roles of gender, impoverishment, and race in the twentieth century
acquisition of fetuses and infants for research. The sociopolitical value of the fetus
and its relationship to the advancement of twentieth century science and education is
also addressed.
5 At the Intersections of Race, Poverty, Gender, and Science: A Museum Mortuary… 73
Bioarchaeology and Fetal and Infant Collection
Prior to the 1990s, few bioarchaeological studies focused their research efforts on
children1 (Mays et al. 2017). Even with the recent proliferation of study on child
remains, a paucity of publications specifically focuses on fetal skeletons. Halcrow
et al. (2017) summarize this research. Their discussion begins with an exploration
of the definition of fetus. The medical community employs the term ‘fetus’ and it is
now common vernacular. However, a review of the literature reveals that there is no
clear biological definition of fetus. Human development occurs on a continuum, and
thus, there is no clear point at which an embryo transforms into a fetus. Interestingly,
many definitions of fetus describe its initial stage as the point in prenatal growth in
which it is recognizable as human, around 9–11 gestational weeks. For the anato-
mists and embryologists who collected fetuses in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, their obvious presence in utero, coupled with key morphological characteristics
and individual histories from the mother, provided clues to gestational age. For
bioarchaeologists studying archaeologically derived remains, “fetus” is problematic
terminology as determinations of in utero provenience are often lost in the archaeo-
logical record (Halcrow et al. 2017).
Two recent studies addressed the collection of fetal and infant remains for ana-
tomical education and research. Wilson (2015) discussed a series of 22 child skele-
tons, including fetuses and infants, at the National Museum of Health and Medicine
(NMHM) in Washington, DC. The original collection consisted of 30 skeletons that
were amassed between 1868 and 1903 by the NMHM, then named the Army
Medical Museum (AMM). Skeletons from the series had been on display since at
least the 1950s. Archival records associated with the collection are minimal, includ-
ing information on sex, race, and age. The collection demonstrates a deliberate bias
toward the acquisition of White male skeletons. According to Wilson (2015, 18),
physical anthropologists and anatomists, including AMM’s nineteenth century
curator John Shaw Billings, emphasized the need for a series of “specimens” of the
same sex and race in order to study “normal” anatomy. A second study, conducted
by Dittmar and Mitchell (2016), focused on the analysis of fetal and infant remains
associated with the nineteenth century anatomical collection at the University of
Cambridge. They analyzed differences between fetal/infant and adult dissection
methodologies through the observation of cuts consistent with craniotomy and tho-
racotomy. Dittmar and Mitchell reveal that anatomists collected fetuses and infants
that exhibited normal growth and development and those with pathological condi-
tions. They focused on the sociopolitical value assigned to fetal and infant remains
by science but also demonstrated how social identities impacted the likelihood that
particular fetuses and infants would be acquired for dissection and display.
1
In Mays et al. (2017, 13), the term children is defined as “individuals aged from the foetal period
up to approximately 18 years.”
The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection
The scientific milieu, and in particular that of the budding field of embryology, is
imperative to the understanding of the collection of immature skeletons. A thorough
explanation of the demographics and state of the collections also requires an inves-
tigation into the individual collector’s impetus. During the nineteenth century,
Wilhelm His, who practiced in Leipzig, Germany, was considered among the most
important of Europe’s embryo collectors (Noe 2004). His student Franklin Paine
Mall assumed the first professorship of anatomy at the Johns Hopkins Medical
School in 1893. Mall professed that interdisciplinary study of collected embryos
and fetuses was required. This, in turn, would advance those disciplines who con-
tributed to collection, including anatomy, physical anthropology, comparative
embryology, physiology, pathology, and teratology (Mall 1913a). Mall was particu-
larly interested in the nature and causes of stillbirths and spontaneous abortions
(Noe 2004). Honing in on teratological studies, Mall (1913a) believed that problems
associated with congenital defects could be eradicated through the study of embryos
and fetuses. Mall was also driven by the familiar scientific desire to establish and
refine racial typologies. “Mall was particularly interested in racial embryology, a
term he used to categorize investigations into phenotypic differentiation based on
race or demographic characteristics of the embryo” (Noe 2004). By the end of 1914,
Mall had developed the Department of Embryology at Johns Hopkins University.
From the outset, Mall had argued for the inclusion of physical anthropology in any
institution based on embryological and fetal growth and development (Noe 2004).
This was necessary due to the intensive anthropological training that permitted pre-
cise and replicable metric data for establishing embryonic development (Mall
1913a). Adolph Hans Schultz would fulfill this particular need.
The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection was established by Adolph Hans Schultz, a
physical anthropologist best known for his work in primate anatomy (Schultz 1921,
1924, 1926, 1929, 1941). Schultz began his career in the United States under
Franklin Paine Mall in the Carnegie Institute of Washington Laboratory of
Embryology in Baltimore. Schultz was studying fetal development in Switzerland
when he was hired in 1918 to assist in creating an anthropometric record of the
Carnegie Institute’s human embryo collection. It had become clear to Schultz’s
colleagues that the study of comparative anatomy was necessary for the advance-
ment of human growth and development studies (Morgan 2009). Schultz would
spend a great deal of time studying the fetuses, of both nonhuman and human pri-
mates, focusing on evolutionary comparisons in their growth and development.
Schultz was also very interested in establishing the in utero evidence for racial
differences (Morgan 2009). This manifested in such publications as The
Development of the External Nose in Whites and Negroes (Schultz 1920) (Fig. 5.1).
Schultz relied heavily on his colleagues from around the world to supply nonhuman
primate fetuses (Morgan 2009). At this time, we are unaware of precisely when
Schultz commenced human fetal skull collection. In contrast to the nonhuman
Interocular breadth
Nasion
Nasal height
Upper face height
Subnasale
Stomion
Vertical angle Horizontal angle

Nasal breadth
Fig. 5.1 Fetal measurements of the external nose (Schultz 1920)
primate fetal remains, it is likely that many of the human fetuses and infants col-
lected represent individuals from the Baltimore region. This is due, in large part, to
the easily obtainable “specimens” available at Johns Hopkins.
The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History
currently consists of 112 skulls (Fig. 5.2). In addition, limited documentation is
available, consisting of identification cards that contain information regarding age,
racial designation, and sex. The deficiency in archival data attributed to the remains
is likely due to a lack of consideration for the social and historical factors that con-
tribute to explanations of biology. In contrast to its name, the fetal collection
includes the skulls of stillborns, neonates, and infants in addition to fetuses
(Table 5.1). The previously assigned skeletal age of the remains in the collection
may be a source of error due to the inability to determine the accuracy of the pro-
vided age assessments. Social ages were also discerned from the ID card informa-
tion (Table 5.2). The documentary archive clearly reveals that the skulls were
assigned both “White” and “Negro” racial designations, with the majority of skulls
from Black individuals. It is important to note that the Johns Hopkins Fetal
Collection currently housed at CMHN may not include all of the individuals in the
original collection. Additional remains may be located at other museums in the
Baltimore and Washington, DC areas. This is likely as the loaning of skeletal
remains among educational institutions was commonly practiced.
Fig. 5.2 Skull remains of Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection #91
The Sociopolitical Value of Fetal and Infant Remains
The biocultural paradigm has informed much of bioarchaeological research in

recent decades, but only within the last 10 years have these investigations truly inte-
grated developments within social theory (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Mays et al.
2017, 4–5; see volumes in this series). Some of these recent contributions have
drawn on social theories and incorporated historical and archaeological evidence in
Table 5.1 Skeletal age of Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection by sex and racial designations2
Number of Number of Number of Black Number of White
Skeletal age Black males White males females females
<30 gestation 12 9 20 7
weeks
30–40 gestation 10 0 3 1
weeks
Newborn 2 1 2 0
0–3 months 5 5 6
3–6 months 1 8 0 1
6–9 months 2 0 0 2
9–12 months 0 0 2 0
12–15 months 2 0 1 1
N/A 0 0 1 0
Table 5.2 Social age as recorded on identification cards, transcribed from those originally written
by Adolph Hans Schultz
Number of Number of Number of Black Number of White
Social age Black males White males females females
Fetal 21 12 23 8
Stillbirth 1 2 0 0
Newborn 2 2 2 2
0–12 months 8 12 5 7
More than 2 0 1 1
12 months
N/A 0 0 1 0
Total 34 28 32 18
order to provide enhanced understanding of the embodiment of social processes and

socially induced stressors on children. Bioarchaeological research beyond the cor-
poreal fetus is minimal due, in part and somewhat ironically, to the lack of fetal
remains in archaeological contexts (Halcrow et al., 2017). But this may also be due
to the highly politicized and contentious debate within the United States and else-
where regarding women’s reproductive rights. Investigations into fetal value in past
cultures require careful consideration of multiple epistemic locations. Although less
likely for a human embryo, the fetus is often assigned some cultural value, be it
positive or negative, by societies, communities, and individuals.2
Bioarchaeologists are uniquely situated to contribute to discussions of social atti-
tudes toward fetuses and infants in past populations. Mortuary treatments may
2
Many of the metric data and skeletal age estimates were collected and assessed by Mahmoud Y.
El-Najjar, then at Case Western Reserve University. His intials M.Y.E. are written on the majority
of the identification cards
reveal information regarding social identity and concepts of personhood. A bioar-

chaeology of personhood framework permits the inclusion of individuals from pre-
biological conception to post-death commemoration and memorialization. This type
of approach is particularly applicable to individuals whose biological life-death
timeline is extremely short, as is the case for spontaneous abortions, terminated
pregnancies, stillbirths, and infant deaths. Even in cultures and societies in which
social life is not recognized until birth (or even puberty), fetuses and infants may
hold social meaning related to personhood, e.g., a precursor to a soon-to-be-born
person, a human spirit, and a deceased member of the community reanimated into
the next generation.
Capturing the “Normal” Fetus: Collection and Commodification
Dittmar and Mitchell (2016) argued that the dissection of fetal and infant cadavers
was integral to late eighteenth and nineteenth century anatomical education in
Europe and more commonplace than has been previously recognized within the
literature. Consistent collection of embryos and fetuses within the United States
commenced in the 1890s, with the most prolific collection taking place between
1913 and 1944 (Morgan 2009). As purported by Dittmar and Mitchell (2016), little
attention has been afforded to the unique sociopolitical identity of fetal and infant
bodies that contributed to their use by medical professionals. Although these
scholars are specifically speaking to our knowledge of nineteenth century anatomi-
cal education, the same may be stated for fetal and infant dissection and collection
of the twentieth century.
The cadavers of healthy and typically developing embryos and fetuses were
sought over those presenting with pathological conditions. This was necessary in
order to depict “normal” human intrauterine development (Morgan 2009). In the
early decades of physical anthropology, the skeletal remains of immature individuals
were deemed less important among the taxonomy and hierarchy-obsessed race sci-
entists (Halcrow et al., 2017). The fragility of child crania would often fragment and
naturally disarticulate in archaeological and non-archaeological contexts (Dittmar
and Mitchell 2016; Halcrow et al., 2017). Craniometric analysis became difficult and
measurements unreliable. Therefore, the collection of embryonic and fetal cadavers
was privileged over that of skeletal remains due to the ease with which anthropometric
measurements could be taken.
The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection consists of fetal and infant skulls only; the
postcranial skeleton is absent and their whereabouts unknown. Adolph Hans Schultz
possessed a particular interest in the evolution of primate brain growth and develop-
ment (Schultz 1941). Even though skulls had presented challenges in assessments
of racial typology, their importance in the assessment of brain size and shape across
the primate order was well recognized. Therefore, it is not surprising that his
collection of fetal and infant remains would consist of skulls. Although the fate of
the postcranial skeletal elements is unknown, it is probable that they were discarded
as institutional waste or buried or cremated in unmarked pits or graves.
These fetal and infant skulls held keys to human growth and development and the
morphological differences among the order Primates. However, since the inception
of anatomical skeletal collection, the skull has always been regarded with particular
interest. “Ever since phrenologists took to the stage, human heads have formed to
the cornerstone of human identity” (Larson 2014). Franz Joseph Gall had popular-
ized phrenology, the study of gross morphological features of the human skull and
their connection with personality characteristics (Larson 2014). The idea that per-
sonality traits, associated with the shape of the brain, could be literally embodied
into and onto the human skull led to a significant increase in skull collection across
the Western world. The proliferation of human skull collection remained essential
to scientific inquiry from the time of phrenology to the study of racial typology.
The impetus for study simply transitioned to an indicator of human racial differ-
ences rather than a means to assess individual characteristics. By the mid-nineteenth
century, a significant collection of human skulls was considered essential for any
institution of anatomy or anthropology in order to assess racial difference. By the
mid-1800s, US scientists began to incorporate the collection of all skeletal elements
in their racial typologies, but none had eclipsed the “position” of the skull in provid-
ing information on race. Such collections were already a prominent feature in Europe,
with such scholars as Blumenbach, Coombe, de Ville, and Gall (Larson 2014). As
argued by Larson (2014, 192):
The skull has long been seen as a messenger from the afterlife, because it stands for the
person, and yet that person is absent. He or she has been transformed into something new.
Maybe this is also why skulls have appealed to scientists, because they are, at once, human
and inhuman. Instead of representing an individual, they came to represent a group or
‘type’. Cleaning away the flesh from somebody’s face not only creates a startling ornament,
it is one of the most effective ways to turn an individual into a generic specimen.
This transformation may also be understood as one from a human subject who was
afforded little societal value by those in power to an investigative object that now
holds immense social value in its contributions to science (Geller 2017, 32).
There were many parties involved in the advancement of physical anthropology.
Similar to the embryologists and anatomists who procured whole bodies of
embryos and fetuses, most physical anthropologists were confined to the academic
sector and did not actually interact with women as living “subjects.” Therefore,
fetal collectors needed to form relationships with doctors and gynecologists in
order to obtain the remains needed to build their collections (Morgan 2002, 2004,
2009; Dubow 2011). In addition, procedure-related pregnancy terminations, or
therapeutic abortions, provided a significant source of fetal remains (Brodie 1994;
Morgan 2002, 2004). Doctors were trained to carefully examine tissues associated
with uteri, removed either during surgeries or autopsies, for remnants of human
embryos and fetuses.
On average, 60 physicians have contributed each 100 specimens, and the whole collection
has been obtained from 509 physicians residing in 46 States and countries. I wish to empha-
size again the importance of this cooperative research undertaking, in which, on account of
their altruistic spirit, over 500 persons, most of them unknown to use personally, have taken
part. (Mall 1913b)
The acquisition of cadavers also required the assistance of politicians and public
figures to create legislative and regulatory frameworks that made these collection
practices routine and societally acceptable (Morgan 2009). The Carnegie Institute
and Johns Hopkins University benefited tremendously from the evolution in legal
statutes associated with fetal and infant remains (Mall and Meyer 1921). Prior to the
twentieth century, women had disposed of fetal remains and stillborns, often via
burial in a backyard or basement of a house or placed them within a privy. The
Baltimore Commissioner of Health dictated that these were no longer acceptable
means of disposal (Mall and Meyer 1921). By the early twentieth century, laws
required the reporting and “proper” disposal of miscarriages, stillbirths, and infants
(Morgan 2009; Wilson 2015). This provided ample opportunity for physicians and
then embryologists, anatomists, and anthropologists to obtain their “specimens”
from miscarriages, stillbirths, and deceased infants. The “donation” of fetal and
infant remains was far less expensive than the alternatives of burial in public or
private venues. However, the term donation in this context is inappropriate as it
implies that women provided informed consent. Records from anatomical collec-
tions (e.g., the W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection) indicate that families turned
the bodies of infants and stillbirths over for disposal by the state, county, or district.
However, they do not indicate that women were aware that the remains of their
infants and fetuses were to be dissected, macerated, and kept in skeletal
collections.
Fetal and Infant Value Beyond Scientific Contributions
With regard to Western epistemology, the scientific value of fetal and infant skeletal
remains was now fully established. Lynn Morgan, medical anthropologist and femi-
nist scholar (2002, 2004, 2009), has concentrated some of her research on the efforts
of anatomists and embryologists to collect complete embryos and fetuses, many of
which remain in jars on shelves in the laboratories of universities throughout the
United States. Morgan has argued that the anatomist possessed culturally transfor-
mative powers, as evidenced in the creation of the embryo/fetus and its imbuement
in our collective conscious. As a result, the fetus has become central to our indi-
vidual origin stories. In the Western world, we have accepted that we were once
embryos, who became fetuses, and were then born into this world as infants. For
those who subscribe to the biological understanding, the fetus is one phase of devel-
opment within the continuum of human biological life. However, this notion is not
universal, as not all cultures believe that what is growing inside of a woman’s uterus
is necessarily a life or a human. In addition, many cultures throughout the world do
not identify a fetus as socially human, and therefore social birth takes place at or
sometime after the birth event. Personhood was not assigned to the fetus by the
medical and scholarly communities. Yet, ironically, it would be the embryologists,

anatomists, and anthropologists, who would, through their research, conceptualize
the corporeal fetus to the public. These scientists of the first half of the twentieth
century, including Adolph Hans Schultz, introduced the embryo and the fetus into
cultural consciousness. “The embryo collectors were part of an immense social
transformation……turning embryos from entities that were socially and scientifi-
cally insignificant into tangible, material objects of enormous cultural importance”
(Morgan 2009, 5).
Several scholars have attempted to address the value that women, and commu-
nities, ascribed to infant death. Cannon and Cook (2015) discussed the limited
volume of archaeological research that focuses on emotive motivation in funerary
behavior. They addressed that many disciplines, including anthropology, have dis-
tanced themselves from explorations of emotional expression in the past and in the
present. However, some scholars have argued that high infant mortality rates would
result in an indifference toward infant death (Ariès 1962; Scheper-Hughes 2005;
Stone 1977). In stark contrast, Dye and Smith (1986) suggested that women
regarded their infants as vulnerable individuals and experienced their deaths
intensely. Likewise, Strange (2005) cited intense grief at the death of their infants
among England’s impoverished working classes. Hrdy (1999) has argued that there
is consistency in relation to emotional responses associated with infants across
temporal and cultural spaces. These responses manifest themselves via a number
of practices, including abandonment, neglect, infanticide, indifference, and com-
plete commitment. The cultural values attributed to an infant may elicit a variety of
emotions (e.g., joy, excitement, fear, regret, dread) or conflicting combinations of
emotions (e.g., contentment with familial addition but fear of economic burden).
Less research has been conducted on responses to fetal loss and termination.
Withycombe (2015) addressed spontaneous abortions as eliciting relief and joy for
many American women who faced increasing restrictions on their reproductive
decisions. It may be argued that the entire array of emotional responses to fetal
termination are possible (although not necessarily expressed). The fetus may also
have profound impacts on pregnant women and their families, such as through
distribution of wealth, depletion of economic resources, changes in status, and
implications for access to nutritional resources. As such, fetuses are culturally
important, and anthropological research on their social value and identity among
past populations is warranted.
Exploration of fetal personhood and infant personhood for this particular tempo-
ral context is deficient in this chapter and requires additional attention. The times
during which physicians procured these remains represent unique moments in the
history of the fetus. The medicalization of pregnancy was already well established
within the United States. Socioreligious intervention in pregnancy was already
prominent. In order to avoid assumptive and ahistorical notions of fetal personhood
for nineteenth and twentieth century mothers, this concept should be addressed in
future publications.
The Axes of Gender, Poverty, and Race
The representation of a skeletal assemblage to the living group from which it is drawn
is likely biased, based on any number of variables (Larsen 2015, 422). While tapho-
nomic alterations must be considered, it is often one’s social identities, e.g., age,
gender, race, ethnicity, perceived ability, and social status, that determine the space
and artifacts associated with mortuary context (Larsen 2015). This is also true when
the mortuary context is the laboratory or museum. Most documented skeletal collec-
tions used today in the United States were created during the early to mid-twentieth
century. The modes of cadaver and skeleton procurement and their subsequent role as
research subjects had a profound impact on particular segments of society, with the
majority of these bodies acquired from the socially marginalized (Muller et al. 2017).
Intersectionality, a philosophical and analytical tool developed by Black feminists
(Crenshaw 1991; Lorde 1984), has recently been employed by bioarchaeologists
(Avery et al. 2017; Byrnes 2017; Geller 2017). Intersectionality posits that much of
our embodied experiences are associated with the multitude of facets that make up
our identity. As such, this discussion addresses how structural violences against an
impoverished, Black woman increased the likelihood that fetal tissues from her
uterus would be procured for anatomical and anthropological research.
There were many parties involved in the procurement of fetal remains for scien-
tific research; pregnant women were obviously fundamental to this equation.
However, no relationships were formed, per se, as women were generally not aware
of the fates of the fetuses they once carried or the stillborns that they delivered. In
her discussion of Mayan reproductive management, Geller (2017, 191) reminded us
that “[k]in or community members…may have constrained women’s reproductive
decisions in profound ways.” White, male physicians took over the roles tradition-
ally held by midwives and pregnant women. Wilkie (2003) addressed this transition
as steeped within the economic transformation of the American medical system.
The focus was on the advancement of scientific careers and the potential for eco-
nomic and societal prestige for White male doctors. Many women who carried these
fetuses and bore these infants may not have known that their fetuses were being
taken by doctors and then used by scholars and physicians. Pregnancy was medical-
ized, and women, whether mothers or midwives, were deprived of agency in deci-
sions regarding their bodies, their reproduction, and the fate of their deceased
offspring (Dubow 2011).
Little information was gathered or attention paid to women who “supplied” these
specimens. The scientific community deemed these women as irrelevant to the
study of human growth and development. Noe (2004) noted that the specimen con-
tributions to the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington (CIW) were attained with minimal inclusion of the women who carried
the embryos and fetuses that were collected. In their investigation of the University
of Cambridge anatomical collection, Dittmar and Mitchell (2016, 717) stated that
“procurement of this [fetal] material was dependent on the emotional response to a
miscarriage experienced by a woman.” There is no similar assumption that can be
made with the acquisition of fetal remains associated with the Johns Hopkins Fetal
Collection.
The passage of anatomical laws within the United States permitted the legal
acquisition of corpses from impoverished members of society, mainly through the
use of “unclaimed” bodies (Larson 2014; Muller et al. 2017; Wilson 2015). Other
US skeletal collections, such as the Cobb (Muller 2006; Watkins 2003; Watkins and
Muller 2015), Terry (de la Cova 2010, 2012), Huntington (Pearlstein 2015; Zimmer,
this volume), and Hamann-Todd Collections (de la Cova 2010, 2012), were com-
prised of skeletal remains from poor and marginalized peoples. Impoverishment
was a key requirement for the acquisition of adult and child skeletal remains. Wilson
(2015) provides evidence that almshouses, orphanages, and hospitals provided a
significant source of child cadavers for dissection and subsequent skeletal collec-
tion. Dittmar and Mitchell (2016) revealed that the sociopolitical value of illegiti-
mate children may have marginalized this particular group, making them even more
vulnerable to inclusion among the dissected.
Many of the nameless human remains associated with the Johns Hopkins Fetal
Collection are likely from impoverished and marginalized peoples. In 1889, Johns
Hopkins was established in Baltimore as a charity hospital for the sick and the poor
(Chesney 1963; Grauer 2012). Similar to many other medical institutions within the
United States, the hospital was part of a larger complex which covered over a dozen
acres of land and included an insane asylum and associated cemetery for the
unclaimed bodies of impoverished individuals who had sought assistance at Johns
Hopkins (Skloot 2011). As purported by Paul Farmer (1996), the poor are the most
likely to experience structural violence. Why is this the case? “One answer is that
the poor are not only more likely to suffer, they are also more likely to have their
suffering silenced” (Farmer 1996, 280).
At the time the fetal collection was amassed, Johns Hopkins was the only hospi-
tal in the greater Baltimore area that would treat Black patients and possessed “col-
ored” wards (Skloot 2011). While embryos were acquired from all over the world,
it is probable that many of the fetal and infant cadavers acquired by Johns Hopkins
for anatomical education belonged to the poor local populations, including mem-
bers of Baltimore’s Black communities. Between October 1895 and October 1904,
64.5% of the total number of bodies were “negro” (Howard 1924, 173). The scien-
tists at Johns Hopkins had normalized the use of patients as research subjects,
accepting their bodies as payment for medical services rendered (Skloot 2011).
As noted by several physicians at Johns Hopkins, the large indigent Black popula-
tion meant that there was no lack of clinical material to be used for research (Skloot
2011). Withycombe (2015) has argued that a “partnership” existed between some
women and anatomists in the procurement of embryo and fetal cadavers. While
there is certainly evidence to support this claim, Withycombe also addressed that the
same level of agency was not afforded to all women. She specifically discussed the
lack of agency among enslaved women and immigrants. However, this suppression
of agentive decisions regarding embryos, fetuses, and stillbirths was prominent
among all groups of impoverished women in the United States, particularly women
of color.
Schultz was in residence at Johns Hopkins between 1918 and 1951. Therefore, it
is likely that the majority of fetal remains came from Johns Hopkins Hospital and,
therefore, from women seeking assistance within the greater Baltimore area. Schultz
created this collection during The Great Migration (1910–1970), a period when
African Americans were migrating from the South to urban centers in the North,
including Baltimore. Within Black communities, poverty was exacerbated by the
instability of economic and social support systems that accompanied this migration
(Muller et al. 2017). It is probable that many of the skulls associated with the
collection are those of poor Blacks and Whites from the region.
Wilson’s (2015) exploration of AMM’s child skeletal series indicates that their
anthropologists’ and anatomists’ preference was for the acquisition of White males
in order to develop a series of “normal” variation. However, as Wilson asserted, “[a]
non-uniform series would certainly have been less problematic…the group that was
most plentiful in numbers [Whites] was still difficult to obtain” (2015, 20). In con-
trast to AMM’s preferred collection of White male child skeletons, Schultz’s collec-
tion appeared to be based more on opportunistic acquisition. Interestingly, Wilson
(2015) notes that Schultz complained of a lack of skulls from Black fetuses in the
1910s and 1920s for studies of human variation (citation not provided). Based upon
the identification cards associated with the Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection, the
majority of those fetal remains obtained by Schultz were Black (Tables 5.1 and 5.2).
It is unclear whether Schultz made a deliberate attempt to acquire the skulls of
Black fetuses and infants in order to enhance his efforts in the study of racial differ-
ences. It could be that the skewed demographic makeup of the collection is the
result of opportunistic acquisition from Black women who sought assistance at
Johns Hopkins. There is also the possibility, although we would argue unlikely, that
the larger number of skulls from the Black segment of the population is an artifact
of the incomplete nature of the collection at CMNH.
Conclusion
There is limited information that can be gleaned from the skeletal record without the
analysis of its broader context. Mortuary contextualization is required in order to
understand the cultural and social processes and events of those represented by the
skeletal remains and the surviving members of the community (Larsen 2015).
Within bioarchaeology, mortuary context is colloquially considered as the burial
context. However, mortuary refers to the deposition of the decedent and therefore
includes all spaces in which the deceased occupy, including museums, laboratories,
and university classrooms.
Prior to the use of unclaimed bodies, medical practitioners and anatomists who
needed skeletal remains bought them from grave robbers or acquired the bodies of
prisoners and other social deviants (Halperin 2007; Hildebrandt 2008; Richardson
1987; Sappol 2002). The majority of society viewed dissection as desecration of the
deceased. The use of the bodies of the marginalized and poor ensured that only
lower social classes would be exposed to this dismemberment. It has been argued
that the dissection of the human cadavers (Nystrom 2014, 2017) and subsequent
collection of their associated skeletal remains (Muller et al. 2017) are a type of
postmortem structural violence. Geller’s (2017, 32) discussion of Mbembe and

Meintjes’s (2003) necropower is particularly pertinent to this discussion:
…physicians may have amassed skeletal remains in the name of scientific inquiry, but their
efforts were made possible by violent military and exploitative economic encounters. It was
only after death that decedents included in collections acquired a sort of social worth. (32)
If we do not know that individual women recognized a form of personhood in the fetus,
can we consider fetal collection as a form of structural violence – a manifestation of
necropower?
Socially relevant research on skeletal collections requires competence with
social justice issues (Watkins and Muller 2015). Therefore, such investigations
often require the inclusion of research outside of the established biological anthro-
pology canon. In 2011, Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction book The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks detailed the human experience behind HeLa cells, the first cells to
grow outside the body indefinitely. Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 from cervical
cancer. The research conducted on her cervical cells, i.e., HeLa cells, has assisted in
the development of drugs for a multitude of diseases, e.g., herpes, leukemia, influ-
enza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease (Skloot 2011). Of direct relevance to this
particular chapter is that Henrietta Lacks had sought assistance at Johns Hopkins for
a painful “knot” on her cervix. Henrietta had migrated to Baltimore from a small
rural community where her family worked in a tobacco plantation. Travel time to
Johns Hopkins was significant; it was a foreign space filled with people whose
medical jargon and tone were a different language from her own (Skloot 2011). Yet,
Johns Hopkins was the only facility in the surrounding area that would treat Black
patients. Permission to use Lacks’ cervical cells in medical research was never
required; it was never requested from Henrietta; it was never granted by Henrietta.
The intense popularity of Skloot’s book among the US public speaks to the relevance
of investigations that seek to explore issues related to racial disparities in the historical
acquisition of biological tissues.
The majority of twentieth century anatomists and physical anthropologists
assigned value to the fetus based on its contributions to and advancements of science.
Therefore, the mode of acquisition of fetal remains was not perceived as unethical by
the White, wealthy, male-dominated medical system. The fact that the Johns Hopkins
Fetal Collection consists solely of skulls that are housed in boxes in a museum speaks
to this value. Focus on human anatomy, growth and development, as well as the
advancement of medical professionals’ careers meant that women lost their rights
and their voices in the name of science (Morgan 2009). This is particularly the case
if these women were also impoverished and also women of color. Fetal remains had
been treated as refuse and now had become anatomical objects, devoid of familial
relationships (Morgan 2009). According to Dittmar and Mitchell (2016), many
eighteenth and nineteenth century fetal and infant museum “specimens” were
obtained without consent or knowledge. This is also likely true of the twentieth
century skulls associated with the Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection.
Whether fetuses were attributed personhood or not by those that carried them,
women were deprived of agentive decisions regarding the course of their deceased
offspring (Dubow 2011). The silence and discreet manner with which failed and
terminated pregnancies were handled fostered an acceptance of non-discussion
among women and society. The research presented here represents another chapter
in the legacy of structural violence against poor women, often women of color, by
the historical US medical community. These “stories” resonate with living popula-
tions because they are not just historical. The structural violences against impover-
ished Black communities continues to impact the living. As poignantly and pointedly
expressed by Henrietta Lack’s daughter, “[b]ut I always have thought it was strange,
if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to
see no doctors?” (Skloot 2011, 12). Historically and currently, structural violence
against poor Black women has been prevalent within US medical communities.
With the exception of a paucity of publications (e.g., Dittmar and Mitchell 2016;
Wilson 2015), little attention has been paid to the invisible fetal collections in our
educational institutions. A fuller understanding of the history of skeletal collection
uncovers the dynamic social processes, ideologies and structural violence that led
to these specific mortuary contexts – the end result of the medicalization and
commodification of the fetus. Such research also seeks to problematize histories
of science which fail to address its role in structural violence along the axes of
gender, race, and poverty. The human cost to the advancement of medical and
anatomical knowledge was unacknowledged at the time of anatomical collection
(Geller 2017, 32). The deliberate and “convenient” acquisition of fetal and stillborn
cadavers from poor women, including women of color, should no longer be silenced
within our research.
Acknowledgments We extend our gratitude to Pamela Stone for the invitation to contribute to
this volume. We also wish to thank the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) for permis-
sion to research the Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection. We especially thank Lyman Jellema,
Collections Manager of the Physical Anthropology Lab, CMNH. We also thank Andrew Harrison,
Cultural Properties Archivist and Reference Coordinator, Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives,
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. This research was funded, in part, by the Summer Scholars
Program, School of Humanities and Sciences, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York.
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Chapter 6
Recovering the Lived Body from Bodies
of Evidence: Interrogation of Diagnostic
Criteria and Parameters for Disease Ecology
Reconstructed from Skeletons Within
Anatomical and Medical Anatomical
Collections
Molly K. Zuckerman
Contents
Introduction 89
Background 91
Discussion and Conclusion 100
References 104
Introduction
Anatomical and medical anatomical collections of human skeletal material are cen-
tral to many aspects of research within biological anthropology, including osteol-
ogy, bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and forensic anthropology (Komar and Grivas
2008). In addition to a diverse range of specialized research topics, skeletons in
anatomical collections are used in the development and refinement of criteria and
methods for estimating sex (Phenice 1969), age (Yoder et al. 2001), stature (Trotter
and Glesser 1952), and population affinity (Giles and Elliott 1962) from the skele-
ton. In addition to those in medical anatomical collections, they are also used to
develop and refine diagnostic criteria for identification of the etiology of pathologi-
cal skeletal lesions in human skeletal remains. These enterprises are facilitated by
the fact that anatomical and medical anatomical skeletal collections are typically
well documented. Features such as the sex, age, stature, causes(s) of death, ancestry,
occupation, and other aspects of the social identity, biological profile, and health
M.K. Zuckerman, PhD (*)

Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, Mississippi State University,
Mississippi State, MS, USA
e-mail: mkz12@msstate.edu

90 M.K. Zuckerman
status of individuals included within the collection are frequently recorded prior to
death. This information is often then made available to researchers.
This level of documentation of the biological profile and health status of included
individuals, as well as that of the demographic parameters of the collection, means
that anatomical collections in particular have often been conceptualized as being
representative of the once living populations from which they were derived (Komar
and Grivas 2008). The documented biological profiles mean that these collections
are regularly—and sometimes uncritically—used as reference or prior samples for
less well identified or unknown skeletal samples (Komar and Grivas 2008), which
implicitly renders them neutral bodies of evidence. But, as Usher (2002) cautions,
researchers must be aware that there are no perfectly representative, ideal reference
collections.
Recently, researchers have begun to interrogate the assumed neutrality and rep-
resentativeness of these collections. They have queried what anatomical, medical
anatomical, and other reference skeletal collections represent, as both assemblages
and as individuals. In turn, they have queried whether and how these collections
should be most accurately employed within osteological research (e.g., Ericksen
1982; Komar and Grivas 2008). Often working from biocultural and political eco-
nomic perspectives, researchers including Watkins (2003), Muller (2006), de la
Cova (2010, 2011, 2012), Gengo (2014), and Hunt and Albanese (2005) have
explored biases in these collections. In particular, several have investigated biases in
how the collections were assembled (i.e., selectivity biases), related to the sex, age,
social race, and socioeconomic status of the included individuals, as well as the
pathological lesions that they display. Accordingly, many of these researchers have
emphasized that the life histories of these individuals and the historically specific
biological and social lived experiences of these individuals must be incorporated
into any analysis and interpretation of the pathological manifestations that they
manifest. These include skeletal evidence of interpersonal violence (de la Cova
2010, 2012) and indicators of oral and systemic stress, such as periodontal disease
and periosteal reactions (Gengo 2014).
Here, I focus on skeletal evidence of infectious disease, specifically acquired
syphilis (e.g., treponematosis), within anatomical and medical anatomical skeletal
collections. I explore potential complications and contingencies in the use of this
evidence to generate criteria for the diagnosis of pathological conditions, specifi-
cally syphilis and the other treponematoses, in archaeological skeletal material.
Syphilis, like the other treponematoses, is a chronic infectious disease that can
generate distinctive lesions in the human skeleton. I view this evidence, and diag-
nostic criteria developed for syphilis and the other treponematoses, from a biocul-
tural perspective. This involves attention to the effects of physical, social, and
cultural environments on human biology and plasticity, and on the limits of human
adaptability, which are marked by the expression of disease. There is an increasing
body of scholarship within immunology and biodemography about the effects of
chronic or repeated stress and malnutrition, which are associated with poverty and
social inequality, on the immune system, and in turn on vulnerability to chronic
infectious disease. Given the overall low socioeconomic status to poverty and
6 Recovering the Lived Body from Bodies of Evidence: Interrogation of Diagnostic… 91
generally high degree of lifetime exposure to various stressors experienced by many

of the individuals within anatomical and medical anatomical collections, I ask what
the implications of this may be for diagnostic criteria for syphilis and the other
treponematoses.
Background
Acquired Syphilis
Over the past 500 years, the mysteries surrounding acquired syphilis have motivated
research in biological anthropology, clinical medicine, and related fields (Tampa
et al. 2014). However, most inquiry swirls around the continuing debate over the
origin and antiquity of the disease, which has left other persistent questions about
syphilis much less explored. Syphilis is infamous for its tortuous, multistage course
and for the great diversity of manifestations that it can produce. The latter has earned
it the moniker of “the great mimicker” for the number of other conditions with which
its symptoms can overlap (Peeling and Hook 2006). Accordingly, one persistent
question is that of how Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum, the bacterium that
causes syphilis, produces the manifestations of the disease. Research on this question
flourished in the early twentieth century, as practitioners sought indicators that could
be used to predict the course and severity of infection in cases of syphilis (Fleming
and Moore 1941). But this line of inquiry tapered off with the advent of antibiotics as
effective therapies for syphilis in the mid-twentieth century (Quétel 1990).
Only recently has research by Carlson et al. (2011) begun to greatly elucidate
this question. Importantly, findings from this research may be used to improve the
usefulness of the diagnostic criteria used to identify syphilis in both living patients
and skeletal individuals. They may also grant increased insights into the health
status of infected individuals. Carlson and colleagues base their conclusions on research
using animal models of syphilis, clinical observations of patients with the disease, and
comparisons of the immunopathobiology of Hansen’s disease (i.e., leprosy) to that of
syphilis. They propose that the manifestations of syphilis depend upon the duration of
infection, the immune status of the infected individual, and the lesion site on the
outside or inside of the body. The latter will not be addressed here as it is not
relevant to the study of skeletal material. The duration of infection is measured
as stages. Syphilis expresses in three stages: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
These stages reflect the interaction of T. pallidum pallidum with the host and the
effects of the immune response (Carlson et al. 2011).
According to Carlson et al. (2011), the host immune response to syphilis and the
manifestations of the disease consist of a balance between two immunological pro-
cesses. These processes consist of a cell-mediated immune response, specifically
delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH), and a humoral- or antibody-mediated immune
response (Carlson et al. 2011). DTH is a beneficial reaction that features an increased
92 M.K. Zuckerman
population of antigen-specific—in this case to T. pallidum—CD4+ T lymphocytes.

These are a subtype of white blood cells that play a central role in cell-mediated
immunity. CD4+ T lymphocytes excrete cytokines in the area(s) where pathogenic
antigens are detected. In turn, the cytokines, which function to affect other cells,
actively recruit additional lymphocytes and macrophages, which are large phago-
cytic cells (Janeway et al. 2005). These processes play out during the progressive
stages of infection. Primary stage, which occurs 3–90 days after inoculation with
T. pallidum, features a chancre at the inoculation site and a cell-mediated immune
response of regional lymphadenopathy. Secondary stage, which occurs 4–10 weeks
after initial infection, features hematogenous dissemination of the bacteria. It also
involves diverse symptoms including disseminated rashes, mucosal ulceration, and
transient, non-specific skeletal lesions (Singh and Romanowski 1999). The level of
the DTH response to the dissemination of T. pallidum throughout the body results
in either complete or incomplete bacterial clearance. In the majority of cases of
syphilis, approximately 60–85%, which represent immunologically competent indi-
viduals, a strong DTH response causes complete bacterial clearance. In these indi-
viduals, infection resolves with the end of secondary stage disease (Carlson et al.
2011), which typically occurs within 3 months (Singh and Romanowski 1999).
In the remaining minority of cases, approximately 15–40%, which represent
immunologically incompetent individuals, a weak DTH reaction results in incom-
plete clearance (Carlson et al. 2011). These individuals manifest asymptomatic,
latent infection after the end of secondary stage, which is followed by tertiary stage
infection. Tertiary stage can arise within months of initial infection in those with HIV
coinfection (Gregory et al. 1990; Bari et al. 1989), to 3–7 years to as much as
30 years afterwards (Singh and Romanowski 1999; Fournier 1899), depending on
the individual’s immunological competence. Tertiary syphilis is associated with
excessive or chronic inflammatory processes, either a cytotoxic T-cell response or
strong humoral antibody response (Carlson et al. 2011). A cytotoxic T-cell response
involves destruction of infected and/or damaged cells by T lymphocytes. In a humoral
antibody response, antibodies produced by B lymphocytes, another subtype of white
blood cell, cause the destruction of microorganisms present in the spaces outside of
cells (Janeway et al. 2005). Both of these processes damage host tissues (Carlson
et al. 2011).
Tertiary stage can produce a range of manifestations. Some affect the skin and
other mucous membranes. Others are internal, producing cardiovascular, neurologi-
cal, or skeletal involvement, and gummata. Gummata are destructive lesions with a
central necrosis that can occur in any tissue (Singh and Romanowski 1999). They are
caused by a chronic granulomatous immune response, likely part of an ineffective
DTH reaction at sites of persistent infection (Carlson et al. 2011). In addition to gum-
mata, skeletal involvement can include periosteal reactions, which is new bone depo-
sition beneath the periosteum; osteitis, which is sub-endosteal new bone deposition
within the medullary canal; and osteomyelitis, which is inflammation within the inte-
rior of a skeletal element (Ortner 2003). Importantly, skeletal involvement, whether
gummata or another lesion, is relatively low in syphilis; between 1% and 20% of
tertiary cases manifest skeletal involvement (Resnick and Niwayama 1995).
Diagnostic Criteria
Diagnostic criteria exist for a great range of pathological conditions in human skel-
etal material, including syphilis (Ortner 2003). Overall, the diagnosis of pathologi-
cal lesions in skeletal material is very similar to disease screening in epidemiology.
The purpose of these two processes is to identify whether a given individual suffers
from a condition and, on the population level, to estimate the prevalence of the con-
dition with a given subpopulation or sample (Boldsen 2001). In part because of the
limited array of responses that the skeleton can manifest in response to physiologi-
cal insult (Ortner 2003), as well as because of host-pathogen coevolution over time
(Greenblatt and Spigelman 2003), no skeletal manifestation occurs only in individu-
als suffering from a particular condition. There is also no one skeletal manifestation
that occurs in all individuals with the condition (Boldsen 2001). This means that
diagnostic criteria, whether for use in epidemiology or paleopathology and bioar-
chaeology, should be based on the epidemiologic sensitivity and specificity of mani-
festations (Boldsen 2001). Sensitivity is the probability of having the manifestation,
given that the individual suffered from the condition. Specificity is the probability
of not having the manifestation, given that an individual did not suffer from the
condition. Following this, a given skeletal manifestation is associated with a condi-
tion if its sensitivity is larger than one minus its specificity. As Boldsen (2001, 381)
explains, this degree of sensitivity means that the probability of exhibiting the mani-
festation is greater among individuals suffering from the condition than among indi-
viduals not suffering from it.
Problematically, however, diagnostic criteria for use in paleopathology and bioar-
chaeology that employ the concepts of specificity and sensitivity (e.g., evidence-
based diagnostic criteria) exist for only a few conditions (Zuckerman et al. 2016).
These include Hansen’s disease (i.e., leprosy) (Boldsen 2001), malaria (Smith-
Guzmán 2015), and syphilis and the other treponematoses (Hackett 1976). It is true
that numerous descriptions of pathological lesions in human skeletal material,
including both macroscopically and microscopically observable lesions, have been
generated for use in identifying these conditions in skeletal material (e.g., Steinbock
1976; Ortner 2003; Waldron 2009; Aufderheide and Rodriguez-Martin 1998; Schultz
2001; see Hackett 1976: 19–20 for earlier examples). Many of these have been gen-
erated through the examination of cases of syphilis and the other treponematoses
within anatomical and medical anatomical collections (e.g., Steinbock 1976; Ortner
2003; Schultz 2001). However, none of these descriptions are evidence- based,
employing the concepts of specificity and sensitivity (Harper et al. 2011). Therefore,
the focus of this inquiry is narrowed to Hackett’s (1976) set of evidence-based
diagnostic criteria.
94 M.K. Zuckerman
Diagnostic Criteria for Syphilis
Hackett’s (1976) diagnostic criteria are based on the comparison of specimens with
skeletal evidence of tertiary syphilis to those without evidence of syphilis, all
derived from medical anatomical collections. Specifically, Hackett compared speci-
mens from individuals with clinical, antemortem diagnoses of syphilis (true posi-
tives) to specimens with clinical, antemortem diagnoses of other disease conditions
(true negatives) (i.e., leprosy, tuberculosis, Paget’s disease, trauma, chronic leg
ulcers, pyogenic osteomyelitis, tumors) to specimens with no documented condi-
tions (i.e., “healthy controls,” true negatives). Hackett found that only two of the
skeletal manifestations of syphilis had high specificity; only these two can be con-
sidered to be “specific” to or diagnostic of syphilis. One manifestation is nodes and/
or expansions on long bones of the skeleton that are accompanied by superficial
cavitations or shallow pitting (see Fig. 6.1a). Expansion, resulting in the enlarge-
ment of a skeletal element, is caused by periosteal reactions and/or osteitis. Nodes
are localized enlargements, ranging from small (4–5 cm) to up to half of an element,
which are created by periosteal reactions. The second manifestation is the final
stages of the caries sicca sequence, which occurs on the cranial vault (see Fig. 6.1b).
Caries sicca forms in a sequence; over time, gummatous focal destruction and pit-
ting, necrosis, osteitis, and excessive healing can produce a greatly thickened vault
covered in confluent pits and star-shaped radial scars (Ortner 2003; Hackett 1976).
Critically, gummata are the cause of the focal destruction and pitting involved in
both the superficial cavitations on long bones and the focal destruction of caries
sicca (Ortner 2003).
A second class of manifestations have less specificity to syphilis and are concep-
tualized as being “on-trial” characteristics (Hackett 1976) or “suggestive” of syphi-
lis (Powell and Cook 2005). These include finely striated nodes and expansions on
long bones, coarsely striated and pitted expansions on long bones, and rugose or
rough nodes and expansions on long bones (see Fig. 6.2a), as well as the early
stages of the caries sicca sequence (see Fig. 6.2b). To varying degrees, all of the
other skeletal manifestations of syphilis, such as periosteal reactions, are also found
in individuals suffering from other conditions. They are merely “consistent” with
Fig. 6.1 (a) Expansion accompanied by superficial cavitations on the left fibula (Photo credit:
Molly Zuckerman). (b) The final stages of the caries sicca sequence on the frontal bone of the
cranial vault (Image credit: Molly Zuckerman)
Fig. 6.2 (a). Rugose nodes and expansions on the right tibia (Image credit: Molly Zuckerman).
(b) The early stages of the caries sicca sequence on the cranial vault (Image credit: Molly
Zuckerman)
syphilis (Powell and Cook 2005) and have much less diagnostic value (see Harper
et al. 2011 for further discussion of this issue). Importantly, while Hackett based his
criteria on specimens from individuals with acquired syphilis, these criteria are also
used to identify the other treponematoses—yaws and bejel—in skeletal material
(Harper et al. 2011). This is because the manifestations caused by these three trepo-
nematoses are widely understood to be undistinguishable from each other in skele-
tal material (see Ortner 2003; Hackett 1976), meaning that the criteria are used to
identify evidence of treponematosis, rather than syphilis, yaws, or bejel specifically
(Harper et al. 2011).
Hackett visited 22 anatomical and medical anatomical collections between 1966
and 1970, inspecting a total of 15,953 specimens and individuals (Hackett 1976,
358). His criteria were based on inspection of 674 specimens, including 424 crania
and 250 long bones, from European medical anatomical collections. The majority
of specimens came from English and Scottish medical school museums of pathol-
ogy (Hackett 1976, 458–9), with the remainder derived from medical collections in
Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and the USSR. All of these specimens
were collected in the nineteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries (Hackett 1976, 463).
Observations of the remaining 15,279 specimens and individuals complemented his
inspections of the medical anatomical specimens, but did not contribute to the basis
of the criteria. These remaining examples were derived from medical and medical
anatomical collections in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, with
almost a third—4650—in collections from the United States. These included 1525
examples from the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as 3125 from collections held
by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (Hackett
1976, 458–9). These included the late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century
Huntington anatomical collection and the early- to mid-twentieth-century Robert
J. Terry anatomical collection (Hunt and Albanese 2005). The Huntington and Terry
collections are discussed in detail below.
96 M.K. Zuckerman
Medical Anatomical Skeletal Collections
Medical anatomical collections exhibit a number of selectivity biases (Hunt and

Albanese 2005). Physicians and anatomists, among other sources, generate medical
anatomical collections; specimens, including those inspected by Hackett, derive
from autopsies, surgical operations, or dissected cadavers. These collections fre-
quently focus on pathological conditions and specimens, with the intent of demon-
strating the natural or untreated course of conditions for the purpose of medical and/
or dental instruction. This means that single skeletal elements or portions of the
skeleton are typically retained, rather than whole skeletons (Ortner 2003).
Additionally, medical anatomical collections are biased toward adults with very few
subadults. Importantly, however, the same is true of many archaeological skeletal
assemblages (Hackett 1976); this is true for the latter because of material issues
related to age-based variation in mortuary practices, preservation, and recovery dur-
ing excavation. Both Hackett (1976) and Ortner (2003) also note that specimens in
medical anatomical collections are biased toward the more severe end of the spec-
trum of manifestations for a given condition and do not represent the full range of
manifestations. In contrast, milder manifestations are more likely to be found in
archaeological assemblages (Ortner 2003; Hackett 1976). Nonetheless, dry bone
pathological specimens from medical anatomical collections form the basis for the
vast majority of descriptions of pathologies in skeletal material and diagnostic cri-
teria in paleopathology and bioarchaeology (Ortner 2003).
Medical anatomical collections are also generally distinguished by the overall
poverty of the individuals from which the specimens are derived (Richardson 2001).
The focus here is on medical anatomical collections in England and Scotland, given
that they provided the majority of specimens employed by Hackett as the basis for
his diagnostic criteria. The collections used by Hackett were created in the eigh-
teenth to early twentieth centuries at medical schools, such as the Royal College of
Surgeons in London, and public hospitals, such as St. Thomas’ and St.
Bartholomew’s, in London (Hackett 1976, 458). In England and Scotland, the mid-
eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries were characterized by substantial social and
economic changes due to industrialization and increased urbanization, particularly
an increase in numbers of the poor (Daunton 1995). These changes were coupled
with low longevity (c. 35–50 years at birth) (Wrigley and Schofield 1989) and high
morbidity and mortality from infectious disease, particularly among the urban poor
(Scott and Duncan 1998). This occurred simultaneously with ontological shifts in
understanding of health and the body, which newly conceptualized disease as some-
thing that could be treated or prevented, as well as with the rise of the humanitarian
movement during the Enlightenment. “Voluntary,” charitable public hospitals rose
in unprecedented numbers to provide free to relatively low-cost professional health
care to the poor, who constituted the majority of the industrial labor force (Binski
1996). Notably, many of these patients suffered from “the pox,” which encompassed
several venereal conditions, including syphilis. For example, the pox was the most
commonly treated condition at St. Thomas’ and St. Bartholomew’s for many years
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Siena 2004, 2005). In addition to health
care, these hospitals provided experience for medical practitioners; one aspect of
this was observation of bodies of both living and deceased patients. The new
anatomico-pathological medical models demanded that outward signs of disease be
linked to internal ones (Foucault 2003), and in the preanesthesia era, this necessi-
tated dissection. For educational purposes, dissected specimens were also retained
within medical museums for medical training (Gaynor Western 2015). As part of
the utilitarian ethos that arose within the administration of medical charity, these
specimens became part of the nonnegotiable contract between patient and institu-
tion; frequently, body parts became the property of the hospital as part of the agree-
ment in admitting patients (Fowler and Powers 2012). Postmortem dissection of
patients became increasingly common in the early nineteenth century. This was
enabled by dissection of the bodies of executed convicts, which were legally avail-
able to medical practitioners, and those of corpses stolen from cemeteries and
funeral homes by so-called Resurrection Men (Richardson 2001). After the passage
of the Anatomy Act of 1832 in England, which gave practitioners legal access to
unclaimed bodies, particularly residents of workhouses and prison inmates, dissec-
tion became even more common (Richardson 2001). However, dissection—and the
availability of a body for dissection—was a major violation of contemporary social
norms and Christian doctrine. The latter dictated that only bodies which were com-
plete when they were buried could participate in the Resurrection (Cherryson et al.
2011). Through all of the channels by which bodies might be made available for
medical dissection, the poor—who had no escape from this morally repugnant and
socially undesirable outcome or recourse for avoiding it—overwhelmingly consti-
tuted those subject to the practice (Richardson 2001; Gaynor Western 2015).
Overall, the consequence is that specimens and individuals in medical anatomical
museums overwhelmingly represent the bodies of the poor (Reinarz 2005).
Anatomical Collections
Many anatomical collections were also generated from the skeletons of documented
human cadavers but specifically those used for anatomical dissection in medical
schools. Individuals collected prior to World War II, which constitute those inspected
by Hackett, were typically obtained from hospitals and institutional morgues and
represent bodies not claimed by relatives (Hunt and Albanese 2005). In many parts
of the United States prior to WWII, the availability of these bodies for anatomical
instruction was common practice. Characteristically, these individuals were largely
of low socioeconomic status to poor (Hunt and Albanese 2005) and were typically
members of ethnic minorities. Individuals in the Huntington collection, for instance,
were European immigrants and residents of New York City who were poor to low
socioeconomic status (Hunt and Albanese 2005). Similarly, the Terry collection was
comprised of individuals from St. Louis and other urban areas of Missouri, who
were very low socioeconomic status to poor (Corruccini 1974). They were largely
98 M.K. Zuckerman
African American and unskilled laborers (de la Cova 2011), and as a result of structural
violence and racial discrimination and prejudice, they were subject to high levels of
environmental and social stressors during their lives (Gengo 2014). This is evident
in diverse lines of evidence—documentary and skeletal—from these collections.
Gengo (2014), for instance, documented high levels of skeletal evidence of oral and
systemic disease, specifically periodontal disease paired with non-specific perios-
teal reactions, in the Terry collection, but at significantly higher rates in adults iden-
tified as black versus white. Also within the Terry, de la Cova (2011) documented
extremely high frequencies—86.6% of the more than 300 skeletons examined—of
porotic hyperostosis, which was interpreted as evidence of dietary insufficiency.
Frequencies were similar between African American skeletons and European
American skeletons for this indicator, evidencing shared high levels of malnutrition
during growth and development. But frequencies were significantly higher in
African Americans for evidence of different kinds of infections, such as tuberculo-
sis and osteomyelitis, indicating the effects of exposure to differential stressors on
health (de la Cova 2011).
he Embodied Effects of Poverty, Low Socioeconomic Status,

T
and Lifetime Exposure to Physical and Psychosocial Stressors
Hackett’s criteria were based on specimens from medical anatomical collections

and further informed by individuals and specimens with tertiary syphilitic lesions
from both medical anatomical and anatomical collections. As indicated above, these
bodies of evidence are heterogeneous in regards to the regions from which they
were derived. But, those individuals within the medical anatomical collections in
particular do have a relative homogeneity relative to their disease ecology and the
biological and social conditions that they experienced during life. These include
experiences of low socioeconomic status to poverty during industrialization and
urbanization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the malnutrition and
physical, social, and psychosocial stressors associated with social inequality and
poverty in these contexts (Scott and Duncan 1998; Roberts and Cox 2003). They
also have a relative homogeneity in that they all express tertiary syphilitic lesions,
the outcomes of an insufficient DTH reaction, indicating a shared immunological
ecology. Overall, their disease and immunological ecology can be interpreted as
comprising a negative synergy between the immunopathobiology of syphilis and
highly compromised human biology, the latter produced through the experience of
chronic or repeated physiological stress and malnutrition.
Insight into the parameters of this synergy comes from research in immunology
and biodemography on the effects of physiological stress responses on immune
function. Biodemography is a branch of demography concerned with the interac-
tions of biological and demographic determinants over the life course. Life course
epidemiology examines the long-term effects of physical and social exposures and
conditions during early life on health and disease risk later in life. Unlike acute
stress, on the order of hours, repeated stress or chronic stress, which can persist for
weeks to years, has well-documented adverse effects on health (Ader 2007).

Specifically, chronic or repeated exposure to physical and psychosocial stressors,
such as those generated by social inequality, poverty, and other adverse experiences,
results in allostatic load. Allostatic load comprises “wear and tear” on the body
through a process of prolonged activation of allostatic systems, such as the immune
system (McEwen and Wingfield 2003). Chronic stress can lead to immunological
suppression (Padro and Sanders 2014), specifically impairment of certain types of
cell-mediated immune responses (Cohen et al. 1991), including DTH (Kelley et al.
1982). The effects of chronic stress on DTH are best understood in animal models
(e.g., Kelley et al. 1982), with little known about the effects of specific stressful
phenomena, such as poverty, on DTH in humans. Overall, in animal models, while
acute stress enhances DTH reactions, chronic stress suppresses DTH (Dhabhar and
McEwen 1997). For instance, in mice, exposure to a chronic stressor, in this case
restraint—a primarily psychological stressor—for over a month significantly sup-
pressed DTH reaction, as detected in their skin (Dhabhar and McEwen 1996).
Within humans, the dynamic appears to be more complex. For instance, adults who
experienced adversity in the form of trauma, and have chronic PTSD, manifest
heightened DTH (Altemus et al. 2004), while adults with chronic melancholic
depression manifest decreased DTH (Hickie et al. 1993). Overall, in animal models
and within many of the few studies conducted on humans, chronic stress dampens
cell-mediated responses, including DTH, to pathogens; the effects include reduced
to failed bacterial clearance and persistent infection.
The effects of malnutrition on immune function are much better documented and
understood in both animal models and humans. Activation and maintenance of
immune responses during infection entail increased consumption of energy
(Schaible and Kaufman 2007). Consequently, the nutritional status of the host, espe-
cially the presence of malnutrition and protein energy malnutrition (PEM) specifi-
cally, plays a deterministic role in susceptibility to infection. This is particularly true
of subadults but also applies to adults. Overall, malnutrition results in immunologi-
cal suppression (Schaible and Kaufman 2007). For instance, subadults with PEM
exhibit long-lasting immune defects, including altered and impaired cell-mediated
immune responses. Within this, both mice (Abe et al. 2003) and humans (Savino
2003; Savino and Dardenne 2010) manifest decreased T-cell counts, including
CD4+ T lymphocytes, secretion of various cytokines, and diminished macrophage
activity. Consequently, they also manifest reduced to failed clearance of pathogens,
including bacteria. In addition to PEM, micronutrient deficiencies, such as of zinc,
in both humans and animal models are associated with impaired cell-mediated and
humoral immune responses, including severe declines in the number of CD4+ T
lymphocytes (King et al. 2002). This leads to increased susceptibility to infectious
disease through failed clearance of pathogens (Fraker et al. 2003). In adults, malnu-
trition, including PEM and micronutrient deficiencies, has been found to reduce
DTH specifically (Pelly et al. 2005). For instance, PEM in adults so greatly sup-
presses DTH that disadvantaged individuals with tuberculosis in contemporary Peru
generated false-negative tuberculin skin tests results, which are based on a skin
DTH reaction to tuberculin proteins (Pelly et al. 2005).
100 M.K. Zuckerman
A review of the published literature has not generated any studies of chronic
stress, malnutrition, DTH, and syphilis (or the other treponematoses). But there are
indications that relationships exist. Among other lines of evidence, progression to
tertiary stage from latent infection is much more rapid in immunocompromised
patients, specifically those coinfected with HIV (Bari et al. 1989; Gregory et al.
1990). HIV produces decreasing levels of CD4+ T lymphocytes, among other
effects. Delving into the past, some fifteenth- to sixteenth-century European chroni-
cler’s reports (Arrizabalaga et al. 1997) and nineteenth-century physician’s records
(Quétel 1990) note that tertiary syphilis was often more severe within already
unhealthy individuals and the impoverished urban poor, though historiographic
biases must be considered. A preliminary work by Zuckerman and Armelagos
(2012) found effects between early and later life health experiences, evidenced by
oral stress indicators, and the manifestations of tertiary syphilis in an aggregated
skeletal sample representing impoverished to lower socioeconomic status skeletons
from post-medieval London. They assessed linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH),
which are indicative of stress, such as malnutrition or diarrheal disease lasting lon-
ger than a week, during development. They also assessed dental caries and peri-
odontal disease, which are both indicative of localized oral stress and inflammatory
processes during adulthood. They found that frequencies of LEH, periodontal dis-
ease, and caries were significantly higher in the pathological subsample with evi-
dence of syphilis (n = 33) (i.e., suggestive or specific lesions) when compared to
control skeletons without evidence of the disease (n = 111) (i.e., no suggestive or
specific lesions). A trend was also evident in the pathological subsample: skeletons
with gummata exhibited a higher frequency of caries and of periodontal disease
than those without. Frequencies of LEH were only slightly higher in those with
gummata. These findings indicate that chronic stress in early life may be associated
with persistent infection with syphilis later in life. Further, they indicate that later
life chronic stress may also be associated with persistent infection. Though this
study was small in scope, it suggests that negatively synergistic downstream effects
may exist for early life chronic stress relative to later life chronic stress and persis-
tent syphilis infection. In effect, early life and later life stress paired with persistent
infection may be indicative of an otherwise invisible immunological process: an
inadequately strong cell-mediated immune response early in life, specifically weak
DTH, and an antibody-mediated humoral response later in life, associated with a
blossoming of tertiary disease. This is especially true of those manifesting gummata
(Zuckerman and Armelagos 2012), the product of continued, weak DTH reactions.
Discussion and Conclusion
What does this information portend for diagnostic criteria for syphilis and the other
treponematoses? Specifically, what are the implications for Hackett’s (1976) diag-
nostic criteria for syphilis and the other treponematoses, which were based on
inspection of medical anatomical collections and informed by anatomical
collections? There are two relatively clear implications, along with a third more
potential and ambiguous one, for these criteria and for the application of these cri-
teria to pathological skeletons in archaeological assemblages.
The first implication is that the ability to identify an individual as manifesting
evidence of syphilis (and the other treponematoses) is, in effect, dependent on their
immunological status during life. Specifically, it is dependent on their immunologi-
cal status during primary and secondary stage syphilis; an immunologically compe-
tent individual can mount a sufficiently strong DTH reaction during secondary stage
that they complete bacterial clearance and do not maintain persistent infection.
These cases, though infected with syphilis during life, are effectively invisible to the
paleopathologist or bioarchaeologist: recall that primary and secondary stage syphi-
lis do not generate lasting or distinctive skeletal manifestations. In the current
absence of any evidence-based diagnostic criteria for syphilis and the other trepone-
matoses that rely upon microscopic indicators (see Harper et al. 2011) rather than
macroscopic or biomolecular evidence of infection (Bouwman and Brown 2005;
but see Montiel et al. 2012), only cases of tertiary stage disease are archaeologically
visible. These tertiary cases represent individuals who were immunologically com-
promised during primary and secondary stage infection and mounted a DTH reac-
tion that was insufficient to complete bacterial clearance. This interpretation has
substantial impacts on the practice of identifying evidence of syphilis and the other
treponematoses in the archaeological record. It also has impacts on estimation of the
frequency of infection in a given skeletal sample in the past and in turn for estimat-
ing the prevalence of infection in the original living population from which the
sample was derived. These impacts are magnified by, as mentioned above, the low
frequency of skeletal involvement—1–20% of cases—in tertiary stage.
Second, the certainty of diagnosis for a given individual manifesting evidence of
syphilis (and the other treponematoses) is also dependent, in effect, on their immu-
nological status during life. The diagnostic lesions with high specificity to syphilis
and the other treponematoses—the final stages of the caries sicca sequence and
nodes and/ or expansions with superficial cavitations on long bones—feature gum-
mata. Recall that gummata are likely caused by a weak DTH reaction in the form of
chronic, granulomatous inflammation. Importantly, this is not the same bias in diag-
nostic criteria as that which is relatively characteristic of criteria generated from
medical anatomical collections: a bias toward the most severe (vs. mild) manifesta-
tions. Instead, this is a bias toward a particular type of manifestation caused by a
particular immunological process. As not all individuals with tertiary stage manifest
gummata (Singh and Romanowski 1999), only individuals who expressed this par-
ticular process during life can be deemed “certain” cases of the disease after death.
As above, this interpretation has substantial impacts on identification and estimation
of frequency and prevalence of syphilis and the other treponematoses in skeletal
material. However, critically, the structure of Hackett’s criteria also helps to blunt
this effect. As noted above, second tier of less specific, “on-trial,” or suggestive
lesions, within the criteria, enables the identification of cases with less probable
diagnoses. While cases with these lesions are less certain, they still have a high
probability of manifesting syphilis (or the other treponematoses) rather than another
102 M.K. Zuckerman
condition. This feature of the criteria partially ameliorates the bias created by the
emphasis on gummata.
Third, the degree of chronic or repeated stress and malnutrition experienced by
an individual over their life course may influence whether they manifest tertiary
syphilis and are therefore identifiable as manifesting syphilis (or the other trepone-
matoses) after death. This interpretation is more potential and ambiguous given the
evolving state of knowledge on the impacts of chronic or repeated stress and malnu-
trition on DTH reactions and the limited evidence for the effects of this interaction
on the manifestations of syphilis. In particular, this effect may come into play when
identifying cases of syphilis—and estimating the frequency and prevalence of the
disease—in skeletal samples of varying socioeconomic status. Specifically, higher
socioeconomic status samples, containing individuals who may have experienced
less chronic or repeated stress during their lives and less malnutrition, may yield
fewer cases of identifiable tertiary syphilis than lower status samples might. This
phenomenon—socioeconomic status-based differences in the frequencies of cases
of syphilis—has already been noted for high status versus low status to poor skeletal
samples from urban post-medieval London (Miles and White 2008). Future research
might be fruitfully directed toward investigating this effect.
All is not lost, however. The use of medical anatomical and anatomical collec-
tions to generate evidence-based diagnostic criteria for the identification of disease
conditions in skeletal material, specifically for syphilis (or the other treponemato-
ses), does not generate irresolvable and uncontrollable biases. Hackett’s (1976) cri-
teria, one of the few evidence-based sets of diagnostic criteria in existence for
paleopathology and bioarchaeology, are not so biased that they must be abandoned.
Instead, scholarly knowledge about the characteristics of medical anatomical and
anatomical collections, both in general and specific to each collection, can be used
to inform the application of the criteria for identifying cases of syphilis and the
other treponematoses. Their application can also be informed by knowledge about
the immunopathobiology of syphilis. It can also be informed by knowledge about
the effects of chronic and repeated stress and malnutrition on immunological com-
petence and on the capacity for bacterial clearance. In turn, this knowledge can also
be used to inform the interpretations made about the frequency of syphilis and the
other treponematoses in skeletal samples and, in turn, the estimated prevalence of
infection in past populations.
Several considerations can be made to increase the utility of these criteria, the
accuracy of the identifications and estimations of frequency and prevalence made
using these criteria, and the interpretive value of the findings. Some of these consid-
erations are novel, but some are not, and are established within paleopathological and
bioarchaeological practice. First, researchers have long been aware of the diverse,
paradoxical relationships between the presence or absence of pathological manifesta-
tions on a given skeleton and the individual’s health status before death (Ortner 1991;
Wood et al. 1992). Skeletons without pathologies cannot interpreted in a straightfor-
ward way as having been healthy or immunologically competent (see de la Cova
2011 for a discussion relative to anatomical collections). This consideration should
be viewed as especially true for syphilis in light of its immunopathobiology. As a
beginning step, researchers seeking to estimate prevalence of the infection based on

cases identified using Hackett’s (1976) criteria might consider employing the known
parameters for frequencies of tertiary skeletal involvement as well as the frequency of
cases which progress to tertiary disease to generate parameters for the estimated prev-
alence of the disease in a given population in the past. Researchers are cautioned to
incorporate into their calculations the knowledge that many skeletons without pathol-
ogies in a given sample may still have been infected with syphilis during life. Several
researchers have already incorporated these considerations into their reconstructions
of the prevalence of syphilis and the other treponematoses in the past (Lynnerup and
Rhee 2010; Zuckerman and Harper 2013). This is particularly relevant for estima-
tions of frequency and prevalence in skeletal samples representing socially stratified
communities, wherein some privileged members were buffered from chronic and
repeated stress and malnutrition, while more disadvantaged members were overly
exposed. Additionally, researchers comparing features of individuals, such as sex,
age, or health status, with evidence of syphilis and the other treponematoses to those
without at the individual or population level of analysis, are encouraged to employ
very large control, non-pathological skeletal samples. This is because it is currently
methodologically impossible to rule out the inclusion of false negatives of syphilis
and the other treponematoses in a given control sample. Researchers should consider
attempting to include as many possible control skeletons without consistent lesions as
well, in order to maximize the number of true negatives in the control sample and,
therefore, its comparative value (see Zuckerman 2017).
Relative to the first, second, and third implications, researchers investigating
syphilis and the treponematoses might greatly benefit from an increasing body of
scholarship on estimating heterogeneity in frailty in past populations. Various meth-
ods have been developed to estimate this variable, which is defined as age-adjusted
risk of mortality, morbidity, and susceptibility to stressors and disease conditions
(DeWitte and Stojanowski 2015). For instance, multistate modeling has been exten-
sively applied to understanding individual and population-level frailty relative to
infectious disease in the past (e.g., DeWitte and Wood 2008). Fruitful research
might be directed toward using multistate modeling to estimate frailty relative to
syphilis and the other treponematoses for individuals and various samples, and, by
extrapolation, populations in the past. Additionally, Marklein et al. (2016) have pro-
posed a skeletal frailty index (SFI) for methodologically translating between
research on relationships between chronic stress and health in living populations
and those in the past. The SFI, which incorporates a diverse array of skeletal bio-
markers of stress, may enable more precise estimation of the interaction of chronic
or repeated stress, malnutrition, and the immunopathobiology of syphilis, with a
focus on estimating susceptibility to persistent infection.
Lastly, relative to the third implication, future work might return with more
emphasis on anatomical collections. Specifically, researchers might employ data
from anatomical collections that were specifically generated to document the nor-
mal range of human variation, such as the Terry collection, and include individuals
with clinically documented cases of syphilis. Researchers could compare syphilitic
skeletal manifestations in these collections to test the degree of the bias toward
104 M.K. Zuckerman
gummata—and the effects of this bias on the accuracy of identifying syphilis in

skeletal material—present in Hackett’s criteria. If profound biases were detected,
the array of skeletal manifestations of syphilis found within anatomical collections
might be used to refine Hackett’s criteria, potentially generating revised criteria that
are less reliant on gummata and therefore more applicable to the wider array of
manifestations of syphilis and the other treponematoses that may exist within the
archaeological record.
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Part II
Archaeological Collections
Chapter 7
Lives Lost: What Burial Vault Studies Reveal
About Eighteenth-Century Identities
Douglas W. Owsley, Karin S. Bruwelheide, Kathryn G. Barca,

Susan K. Reidy, and Raquel E. Fleskes
Contents
Introduction 111
Background 113
The Burial Vault 114
Other Historical Burial Vault Studies 116
The Human Remains 119
Naming the Past 134
Discussion 136
Conclusion 141
References 142
Introduction
In 1974, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC)

purchased the house and property known as Darnall’s Chance. The eighteenth-
century structure was restored to its original appearance and opened to the public as
a colonial house museum and interpretive center in 1988. Darnall’s Chance House
Museum is located in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on property first owned
by Colonel Henry Darnall, the Deputy Governor of the Province of Maryland for a
D.W. Owsley, PhD • K.S. Bruwelheide (*) • K.G. Barca

Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: owsleyd@si.edu; bruwelheideka@si.edu; barcak@si.edu
S.K. Reidy
Darnall’s Chance House Museum, The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning
Commission, Upper Marlboro, MD, USA
e-mail: susan.reidy@pgparks.com
R.E. Fleskes
Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
e-mail: rfleskes@sas.upenn.edu

112 D.W. Owsley et al.
Fig. 7.1 Darnall’s Chance house and burial vault (excavation under white tent) (Image:
Smithsonian Institution)
short time and a Proprietary Agent of Charles Calvert, 3rd Lord Baltimore. Scottish
merchant James Wardrop acquired the land in 1741 and built the existing 15-room,
Georgian-style house by 1742. During its restoration, an archaeological survey of
the rear yard revealed the presence of a large brick and lime mortar subterranean
burial vault approximately 55 feet north and 48 feet west of the house (Fig. 7.1).
Available primary source documents mention the vault at Darnall’s Chance only
once, although architectural similarities between the house and burial chamber indi-
cate their construction occurred at about the same time.
Repair of the burial vault’s collapsing ceiling required excavation, including the
removal of those interred in the crypt. M-NCPPC archaeologists initiated the work
in 1990. Smithsonian physical anthropologists assisted with the analysis and identi-
fication of the human remains. Multiple lines of evidence were pursued over a num-
ber of years to identify the individuals buried in the vault, including osteological
and chemical analyses (stable isotopes, heavy metals, and mitochondrial DNA), as
well as historical and genealogical research. Making personal identifications of
remains in this burial vault and others, even for elite families of the eighteenth cen-
tury, is difficult due to the absence of children in the written record and burial cus-
toms that include interring extended family members.
The results of this research demonstrate the need for a multifaceted approach in
analyzing remains from these contexts and show how the evolution of analytical
capabilities contributes to this research. The benefit of these types of studies extends
beyond insights into past health and mortality. Burial vault excavation and analysis
can also provide inferences on social relationships within the family (e.g., between
siblings) and customs that give deeper significance and relevance to these studies.
7 Lives Lost: What Burial Vault Studies Reveal About Eighteenth-Century Identities 113
Background
The contemporaneity of the house and burial vault suggests that those interred in the
crypt were inhabitants of the house beginning in the eighteenth century. After mar-
rying in 1747, James Wardrop and his wife Lettice Lee Wardrop (Fig. 7.2), of the
Fig. 7.2 Portrait of Mrs. James Wardrop (Lettice Lee) aged about 26–28 years. This ca. 1753
painting is attributed to the English artist John Wollaston. The Lee family genealogy chart (below)
shows Lettice’s lineage (Portrait: Virginia Historical Society; chart: Darnall’s Chance House
Museum)
Maryland branch of the prominent Lee family, were the first occupants of Darnall’s
Chance. James died approximately 13 years later in 1760, presumably without any
offspring, at the age of 45 while in New York City. Lettice remained at Darnall’s
Chance through two more marriages. In 1762, she married Dr. Adam Thomson, who
immigrated to the United States from Scotland. He attended the University of
Edinburgh Medical School and was known for developing the American Method of
Smallpox Inoculation, which he administered throughout the colonies (Sikora 1995;
Smith 1909). Lettice and Thomson had two daughters who survived to adulthood,
Alice and Mary. In 1767 Thomson died, also while in New York City. Eight years
later, in 1775, Lettice married Colonel Joseph Sim, a longtime family friend and
native of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Lettice and Sim had no children of
their own during their brief marriage. After Lettice died in 1776, Sim served as the
guardian of Alice and Mary. Once they were grown, he moved to Frederick County,
Maryland, where he died in 1794 (Barbara Sikora, 2002, personal communication).
Records show that Mary and her husband lived at Darnall’s Chance between ca.
1783–1786, after which a tenant leased the property until it was sold in 1788. By the
time of the sale, Mary and her husband had relocated miles north to Frederick
County, Maryland, while Alice and her husband lived across the Potomac River in
Alexandria, Virginia. In the sale, Alice and Mary (and their husbands) reserved “the
small square of ground in the garden which covers the family vault, to which vault
as a burying ground [John and Alice Hawkins and Lilburn and Mary Williams], and
their heirs are to have from time to time hereafter free access” (Prince George’s
County Land Records 1788). Under those terms, no subsequent property owner is
likely to have used the vault even though the land changed hands numerous times.
The Burial Vault
Excavation revealed a large rectangular burial crypt measuring approximately

17 feet long by 11 feet wide (Fig. 7.3). Debris, which had filled the vault from floor
to ceiling, included material originating from a long-standing midden containing
eighteenth-century ceramics. Based on the presence of these artifacts, the burial
structure was likely filled during the first half of the nineteenth century and was not
used past this date (Creveling 1992), providing additional evidence linking the vault
to the years when Lettice and her family lived at Darnall’s Chance. The brick cham-
ber is two courses thick, laid in a Flemish bond pattern with a barrel-vaulted ceiling
measuring 8 feet high at the midline. An exterior brick staircase of nine steps,
7.5 feet long by 4 feet wide, descends to the vault’s red clay subsoil floor (Fig. 7.4).
Some of the staircase bricks are different in size and quality from those in the crypt.
The skeletal remains of adults and juveniles were present at various locations
within the vault, but concentrated in the chamber’s eastern half. In addition to the
bones, nearly two dozen bricks were found on the floor in patterns that indicate they
were used as coffin supports designed to limit water damage by raising the wooden
burial containers off the moist floor. Earth stains and nail patterns indicate that
Fig. 7.3 M-NCPPC Archaeology Program map showing vault dimensions and burial locations
(Synthesized field maps: provided by M-NCPPC; digitized by Smithsonian Institution)
Fig. 7.4 Stairwell
entrance and partially
intact roof of the burial
vault at ground surface,
looking east (Image:
Fig. 7.5 Vault interior showing the sub-crypt (Burial 1) in the southeast corner, the Burial 3 skel-
eton in the northeast corner, and Burial 2 remains to the left of mid-center. Bricks used to support
the coffins of Burials 4 and 5 are to the right of Burial 2 and against the north wall (left side),
respectively (Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS, HABS
MD,17-MARBU,3—16)
hexagonally shaped wood coffins once existed, but have since deteriorated. A small
sample of coffin wood was substantial enough to identify as oak. No clothing, jew-
elry, or other personal items were present. Pins and copper oxide staining on bones
suggest the bodies may have been shrouded.
A brick sub-crypt was built into the southeast corner of the burial chamber, measur-
ing 6.7 feet along the south wall and 2.2 feet along the east wall (Fig. 7.5). The sub-crypt
was constructed of bricks similar to those used for the vault, but laid only one course
thick in an English bond pattern. A slightly domed brick roof covered the sub-crypt, with
the midline of the arched west wall measuring 26 inches high. The sub-crypt’s long,
north wall had buttressing from two columns of five bricks with a possible third column
at the west end. Sometime in the past, vandals breached the vault and the sub-crypt’s
interior long wall and removed elements from at least two skeletons. Disturbed bones
were present inside and outside of the sub-crypt and several bricks lay scattered.
Other Historical Burial Vault Studies
When the Darnall’s Chance study began, the construction, use, and evolution of
these subterranean structures in elite funerary practices were relatively unexplored
topics in mid-Atlantic archaeology. No systematic inventory and architectural
Table 7.1 Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century burial vaults in Maryland and Virginia
Vault Location Datea
Maryland
Copley Vault Trinity Episcopal Church, St. Mary’s City, 1694
St. Mary’s County
Erickson-Roundell Nottingham, Prince George’s County ca. 1729
Vault
Family Vault Darnall’s Chance, Upper Marlboro, ca. 1742–1788
Prince George’s County
Carroll Family Vault St. Anne’s Cemetery, Church Circle, Annapolis, ca. 1754
Anne Arundel County
Bordley Family Vault St. Anne’s Cemetery, Church Circle, Annapolis, ca. 1764
Anne Arundel County
Bowie Family Vault Prince George’s County Before 1776
Fendall Family Vault Charles County Before 1778
Beatty Family Vault Grossnickel Farm, Ceresville, Frederick County Eighteenth
century
Getzandanner Family Frederick County Eighteenth
Vault century
Addison Mausoleum Oxon Hill Manor, Oxon Hill, Eighteenth
Prince George’s County century
Key Family Vault Christ Church Cemetery, Chaptico, Eighteenth
St. Mary’s County century
Virginia
Washington Family Bridge’s Creek, Westmoreland County ca. 1677
Vault
Washington Family Mount Vernon, Fairfax County Before 1752
Vault
West Family Vault Alexandria ca. 1769
Lee Family Vault Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County Before
1775–1790
Grayson Family Vault Belle Aire, Dumfries, Before 1790
Prince William County
a
Dates reference historically documented interments, however, many of the vaults were used over
an extended period of time.
evaluation existed, nor does it exist now. However, burial vaults are known from
historic documents and direct observation (Table 7.1).
The earliest identified subterranean burial crypt in this region—the Copley vault
located at St. Mary’s City, Maryland—dates to the seventeenth century. While this
vault was not excavated, an on-site osteological examination of the remains of Sir
Lionel Copley, first Royal Governor of Maryland (1692 until his death in 1693), and
his wife Anne occurred in 1992 (Miller et al. 2004). The description of these remains
interred in lead coffins produced comparative data to aid in the excavation and inter-
pretation of three other seventeenth-century lead coffins buried in the floor of the
Great Brick Chapel at St. Mary’s City.
Several eighteenth-century documents reference tombs used for the interment of

multiple individuals. The most prestigious families in the mid-Atlantic used subter-
ranean burial vaults, including the Washingtons at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Upon
deterioration of their original family vault, a second tomb was constructed in a loca-
tion chosen by George Washington himself. It was built 300 yards from his man-
sion, with an 8-foot arched ceiling made of brick (Strickland 1840). Records indicate
that other members of the Lee family also used burial vaults for interment. Lettice
Lee’s half cousin, Philip Richard Fendall, willed his property including “the vault
and burying ground of the Fendall family to his brother-in-law…” (Rivoire 1990,
75–76). A nephew of Lettice, Capt. Daniel Bowie, detailed in a 1776 request that if
he died in battle, “my body be sent home to my plantation near Collington and there
interred in a vault about twenty feet from the garden walk, near the vault containing
my father’s body” (Bowie 1947, 659–660). In the Lee family, building a vault for
the burial of multiple family members appears to have been tradition, and one may
have been able to choose where their body was interred.
The West family burial vault, built in a then rural area of Alexandria, Virginia, is
one of the few archaeologically excavated burial vaults besides the one at Darnall’s
Chance. Both structures are oriented east-west and have arched ceilings with brick
piers on the floor. The West family vault is smaller, measuring 8 feet wide by 5 feet
long. In 1792, when Thomas West sold the property, he excluded the family vault and
reserved the right of free access for himself and his heirs to repair the vault or inter
other relatives (R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc. 2004). The latter likely
occurred for at least one member of the West family. Sybil West Carlyle was the
second wife of prominent and wealthy John Carlyle of Alexandria. They were mar-
ried for 6 years until she died in 1796 during childbirth. The local Carlyle ceme-
tery plot contains no graves for her or their children who died in infancy. Research
indicates that she was most likely brought back to the West family vault where she
was buried with her infant daughter (R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc.
2004).
Although families like those at Darnall’s Chance and other estates went to great
lengths to entomb and preserve their relatives’ remains, vandalism of burial vaults
appears to have been a common issue, even in antiquity. The Copley Vault at St.
Mary’s City, Maryland, was opened by medical students in 1799, and the lead coffin
of Lady Copley was pried apart to view the body (Thomas 1900). In 1814, the
British desecrated the Key family vault in Chaptico, Maryland. According to a letter
to the Alexandria Herald, “The vault was entered and the remains of the dead
disturbed. Yes, my friend, the winding sheet was torn from the body of a lady of the
first respectability, and the whole contents of the vault entirely deranged”
(Alexandria Herald 1814). The vandalism at Darnall’s Chance was apparently not
isolated to this vault.
In several respects, the vault at Darnall’s Chance fits into the burial tradition of
wealthy, prominent, landowning families in the mid-Atlantic during the seventeenth
and especially eighteenth centuries. While documentary evidence can provide some
information on the vault structures and the families that utilized them for burial,
rarely have archaeologically recovered human skeletal remains from these contexts
been documented and identified by name. These analyses provide a direct measure
of who is interred and the family kinship structures that may dictate burial in a par-
ticular family vault.
The Human Remains
Despite disturbance of the remains, well-preserved bone in the burial vault at

Darnall’s Chance represented nine individuals recovered in mostly discrete areas of
the tomb (Table 7.2). Nearly complete skeletons were recovered, with the exception
of Burials 2 and 3, from which the respective cranium and skull were missing. The
rubble and mixed sandy loam that filled the crypt helped to slow the vault’s collapse
from natural structural degradation and aided the preservation of the bones due to
the large amount of calcium present from oyster shell and mortar. This neutralized
the naturally acidic, clay subsoil (Creveling 1992). The pH values of soil water,
measured in multiple samples using a digital meter, varied between 7.41 and 7.48,
which are slightly alkaline (Hanna 2008).
Table 7.2 Demography and pathology

Burial Age
no. Sex (years) Bone pathology Dental pathology Other comments
1 M 27–32 Healed lytic lesions on the Periapical Skeleton nearly
left frontal. Active and abscessing and complete and
healed periostitis on the caries. Slight well preserved.
left clavicle, scapulae, two dental attrition. Green staining on
left ribs, C2, C3, and T4, the right frontal,
humeri, right radius, the left
femora and tibiae. Lytic mandibular
lesions in the ventral and ascending ramus,
dorsal manubrium. and ventral
Schmorl’s depressions. surface of right
Osteoarthritis of knees ilium.
secondary to infection.
Probable treponemal
infection. Pyogenic
osteomyelitis of right
tibia. Slight cribra
orbitalia.
2 F 45–54 Slight osteophytic Antemortem Skeleton well
development on cervical tooth loss and preserved
vertebrae, thoracic centra, caries. Slight although cranium
and sacral promontory. dental attrition. missing. Green
Periarticular lipping of staining on C1
right scapular glenoid. and C2.
(continued)
Table 7.2 (continued)
Burial Age
no. Sex (years) Bone pathology Dental pathology Other comments
3 F 20–22 Slight healed periostitis on Two teeth lost Skull missing.
the tibiae and fibulae. post mortem, Other elements
both carious are in fair
condition. Gracile
skeleton.
4 Prob. 12–14 Tuberculosis of the spine. Severe carious Skeleton in fair
Ma Severe kyphoscoliosis of lesions. condition. Green
the spine. Psoas abscess. Periapical staining on
Vertebral ends of ribs abscessing. mental eminence,
“clubbed.” osteopenia. Heavy calculus left proximal
Slight cribra orbitalia. deposits. Dentin humerus, distal
Porosity and thickening of exposure femur, and left
the parietals. Bone indicating onset ischium.
development retarded of attrition.
relative to age based on
dentition. Cleft sacrum.
5 Prob. 7–8 None Caries. Calculus Skeleton in good
Fa (moderate condition with
coalescent) even complete
on occlusal cranium. Green
surfaces. stains on mid
sagittal suture and
mid left parietal.
6 Ind. 0.8–1.0 None None Skeleton in good
condition. Rust
deposits on left
parietal.
7 Ind. 0.9–1.1 None None Skeleton in fair
condition. Green
staining on right
parietal and right
occipital squama.
8 Ind. 0.7–1.0 None None Skeleton in fair
condition. Green
staining on
cranial fragments
and scapulae.
9 Ind. Newborn None None Skeleton
complete and in
good condition.
a
Because of the difficulty in determining sex for prepubescent subadults, assignments of sex for
these two juveniles are tentative.
Each set of remains was analyzed to determine age, sex, and ancestry using standard
methodology in skeletal biology (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Procedures
described by Owsley and Jantz (1989), including compilation of bone and dental
inventories, were implemented to allow systematic scoring of pathology. Chemical
testing of bone samples for heavy metals, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and
mitochondrial DNA supplemented the gross visual and osteometric analyses. All
data collected are stored in the Human Skeleton Database at the National Museum
of Natural History, Washington, DC. This relational database includes nearly 20
data categories capturing information on bone and tooth inventories, pathology, and
chemical analyses for over 13,000 individuals, mostly from historic and prehistoric
sites in North America (Barca 2014). Since comparatively few well-preserved eigh-
teenth-century skeletal remains have been studied, this series contributes substan-
tially to the Database for this time.
Three adults, two subadults, and four infants, including a neonate, comprise the
burial vault assemblage. The only adult male (Burial 1) was recovered from the
sub-crypt where he was buried in a coffin based on the presence of coffin nails. Two
females, a woman in late middle age (Burial 2) and one in her early twenties (Burial
3), were interred in wooden coffins that had completely deteriorated. The older
female’s coffin had been resting on brick supports; the coffin of the younger female
had been in direct contact with the floor. The female remains lay side by side in
roughly extended positions on the floor in the northeast quadrant of the vault, north
of Burial 1’s sub-crypt. The remains of a 12–14-year-old adolescent (Burial 4) lay
to the south of Burial 2 and north of the sub-crypt. The bones of the younger child
(Burial 5), aged 7–8 years at the time of death, were against the north wall of the
vault, west of Burial 3. Both youths were buried in hexagonal coffins supported by
bricks. Bones of the two of the infants were on the floor between Burials 2 and 4.
Burial 3 and a third infant near the east wall, just south of the foot of Burial 3, are
likely the earliest interments based on their inaccessible locations in the vault. It was
not possible to determine if all of the infants were in coffins, but the presence of
brick supports suggests this may have been the case for the two recovered between
Burials 2 and 4.
The biological profiles of the individuals in the vault include unusually high rates
of dental disease. Data on the occurrence of dental caries and alveolar bone disease
in permanent teeth for the three adults and two older children are presented in
Table 7.3. Of the 64 erupted permanent teeth in this series, more than a third (39.1%)
show decay. Only two teeth of the young adult female are present, and both are cari-
ous. Carious lesions are especially frequent in the mandibular molars and premolars
of the adult male and older female, as well as in the older adolescent (Burial 4). The
approximately 8-year-old child (Burial 5) retained five deciduous teeth, four of
which had cavities. Only Burials 1 and 4 have abscesses, while Burials 2 and 4
experienced antemortem tooth loss.
The dental disease among the individuals buried at Darnall’s Chance, including
the mild attrition characterizing the dentition of the two older adults, reflects the
frequent consumption of carbohydrates lacking abrasive contaminants— a diet of
mostly soft and sweet foods. The missing cranium and skull from Burials 2 and 3,
respectively, influence the dental pathology data. However, the prevalence of dental
disease is nonetheless high for this small series from the eighteenth century, when
sugar was a costly luxury. The severity of dental pathology in the adolescent
122
Table 7.3 Dental inventory and pathology data

Burial 1 Burial 2 Burial 3 Burial 4 Burial 5
Teeth
Carious teeth
Sockets
Lost antemortem
Abscesses
Teeth
Carious teeth
Sockets
Lost antemortem
Abscesses
Teeth
Carious teeth
Sockets
Teeth
Carious teeth
Sockets
Lost antemortem
Abscesses
Teeth
Carious teeth
Sockets
Lost antemortem
Abscesses
Maxillae
Incisors 1 4 1 1 2 2 4 2 4
Canines 1 2 2 2
Premolars 3 2 4 4 2 4 2 4
Molars 1 1 6 3 1 1 1 1 4 1 2 2
Mandible
Incisors 3 3 1 4 4 4 3 4
Canines 2 2 1 2 2 2
Premolars 4 2 4 3 3 4 1 3 2 4 1
Molars 6 5 6 1 2 2 6 4 4 2 4 1 2 2
Total 21 10 31 0 4 8 5 16 5 0 2 2 0 22 8 28 1 2 11 0 16 0 0
Percent 47.6 0.0 12.9 62.5 31.3 0.0 100.0 36.4 3.6 7.1 0.0 0.0 0.0
Not included in this table are five deciduous teeth from Burial 5: 1 maxillary canine with a carious lesion, 1 mandibular canine, 1 mandibular first molar with
carious lesions, and 2 mandibular second molars with carious lesions.
D.W. Owsley et al.
(Burial 4) is especially unusual, with even recently erupted teeth exhibiting

advanced decay, loss, and abscessing.
In addition to dental disease, chronic, debilitating illnesses are evidenced in the
bones from Darnall’s Chance, specifically those of the adult and adolescent males.
This is in contrast to the older female, whose bones are light in weight (osteopenic),
but show evidence of only mild osteoarthritis, and the younger adult female who has
only slight bone apposition from periostitis on the left tibia and fibula.
The remains of the adult male show a disseminated pattern of osseous lesions,
widespread active and healed periostitis, and cloaca and metaphyseal internal bone
destruction in the proximal right tibia. This suggests a differential diagnosis of
treponematosis, notably acquired syphilis combined with pyogenic osteomyelitis
that progressively spread throughout the body and skeleton. A fungal infection is a
possible diagnosis, but less likely since the bilateral and symmetrical involvement
of many of the bones differs from the typically random pattern characterizing such
infections.
The frontal bone of the adult male has two small cavitating lesions with advanced
remodeling consistent with a mild form of caries sicca. The enlarged acromion and
spine of the scapulae show honeycomb-like lesions bordered by reactive bone.
Diffuse, periosteal bone formation on the left clavicle is also noted for the manu-
brium, which has lytic defects in both surfaces. Additional changes in the skeleton’s
midsection include increased porosity and vascularity in the dorsal surfaces of the
vertebrae and abnormal bone formation with antemortem erosive defects on the
ventral aspect of the sacrum. Elongated patches of plaque-like woven bone are pres-
ent on the visceral surfaces of the two left ribs indicating active inflammation at the
time of death. Periostitis along the internal surfaces of the ribs has been found in
individuals with tuberculosis (Kelley and Micozzi 1984). However, the lack of
extensive vertebral involvement suggests the disease was not spinal column
tuberculosis.
Multiple limb bones display changes consistent with a systemic disease process.
The distal humeri show abnormal bone formation and enlarged distal ends. The
right radial tuberosity has lytic resorption surrounded by sclerotic bone, and the
right ulna shows mild reactive bone below the radial notch. Because of the inflam-
mation, the proximal joints of the right radius and ulna have mild arthritic changes.
In the lower extremities, the distal femora have small areas of abnormal, woven
bone and arthritic changes secondary to infection. The proximal thirds of the tibiae
are significantly enlarged with spicular, osteophytic woven bone (Fig. 7.6). In addi-
tion, the two separate cloacae (draining sinuses) are evident in the proximal third of
the right tibia.
Alterations of the right tibia are characteristic of periosteal reaction to infection.
An anteroposterior radiograph of the bone reveals profound lytic destruction of the
metaphyseal internal bone in association with these drainage canals, suggesting this
lesion had a hematogenous origin. This is consistent with pyogenic osteomyelitis.
The most common agent producing these specific changes is Staphylococcus
aureus, although other pus-forming, necrotizing bacteria, such as Streptococcus, are
capable of generating this type of response (Aufderheide 2005). Involvement of the
Fig. 7.6 Medial and lateral surfaces of the proximal right tibia of Burial 1 show spicular, irregular,
porous, new bone formation caused by a periosteal reaction to an infectious process. A drainage
canal (cloaca) characteristic of pyogenic osteomyelitis is evident on the lateral surface. The radio-
graph (a slice of a complete CT scan) shows internal resorption of the cancellous bone from infec-
tion (arrow) (Image: Smithsonian Institution)
right knee joint resulted in moderate osteophyte development as the infection spread
to the synovium of the proximal tibia (i.e., infectious arthritis). The draining cloacae
present in the right tibia reflect the additional complication of bacterial osteomyeli-
tis affecting the right leg. Additionally, cribra orbitalia (i.e., porosity of the superior
orbital plates) is present and suggests anemia.
The skeleton of the adolescent shows developmental delay and severe bone pathol-
ogy attributable to Pott’s disease (tuberculosis of the spinal column), which certainly
was the precipitating cause of death. Bone development appears to be substantially
retarded (by as much as 3 or 4 years) relative to the age suggested by the dentition.
Many of the vertebral bodies have significant bone destruction, resulting in severe
spinal deformity, rib modification, lytic destruction in the sacrum and right ilium, and
cranial lesions from disease that testify to an extended period of illness.
Changes to the vertebral bodies (centra) are most apparent in the fifth thoracic
through first lumbar vertebrae. The body of the fifth thoracic vertebra has lytic destruc-
tion and collapse, with bony fusion to the underlying vertebral body. Thoracic bodies
of the seventh and eighth vertebrae also have ankylosis. The bodies of the ninth
through twelfth thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae are absent, due to complete, ram-
pant, lytic destruction. When articulated in an upright position, the severe destruction
of the centra permitted extreme forward angulation (a nearly 90-degree kyphosis) of
the lower thoracic spine, which was only partially stabilized by ankylosis of the articu-
lar facets and remaining remnants of some vertebral centra (Figs. 7.7 and 7.8).
The bodies of the lumbar vertebrae show abnormal periosteal bone formation
along with loss of the internal trabecular bone. The posterior surfaces of the lumbar
neural arches are pitted and thickened with abnormally formed bone and, where
broken postmortem, show marked internal absence of the cancellous bone. The
Fig. 7.7 Lateral view of

articulated vertebrae T3
through L3 of Burial 4
showing near 90° forward
angulation of the spinal
column resulting from
infectious destruction of
the vertebral bodies of T9
through L1 (Image:
anterior surface of the sacrum has lytic destruction and bone remodeling mostly
confined to the central region (Fig. 7.9). The posterior surface of the sacrum has a
latticework appearance from resorption and has a complete cleft down its midline.
While spina bifida is normally associated with such a condition, the irregular edges
of the cleft are inconsistent with the straight margins characterized by true spina
bifida (Barnes 2007). Rather, the defect is more consistent with delayed skeletal
growth, in this case affecting the formation of the neural arch (i.e., a cleft sacrum).
Fascia would have covered the cleft, and it likely presented no pain in life.
The visceral surface of the right ilium displays a lesion, but postmortem damage
to the bone limits further description. Anterior sacral involvement and the location
of the pelvic lesion are consistent with reaction to an overlying psoas abscess—a
common complication of spinal column tuberculosis (Ortner 2003).
The ribs display the effects of the Pott’s disease. Periostitis-induced or pleural-
side lesions, sometimes associated with pulmonary tuberculosis (Kelley and
Micozzi 1984), are evident on two ribs. Rib neck morphology is also thickened
posterior to the rib angle. The lower ribs, especially the ninth through the twelfth,
are modified in shape due to severe angular spinal kyphosis and consequential
displacement and distension of viscera. This rib condition resembles elderly individuals
with advanced osteoporosis who experience vertebral collapse with marked kyphosis.
In addition, the left side ribs are straighter with less curvature due to flattening
Fig. 7.8 CT scan slices were used to create a digital 3D model of the spine of Burial 4. The model
was then bisected along the sagittal line, dividing it into right and left halves, which were then
opened 90 degrees in opposite directions to allow for a clear view into the spinal column and into
the vertebral bodies showing destruction of the centra of T9 through L1 and overall clear loss of
trabeculae and density (Image: Smithsonian Institution)
caused by weight-bearing compression indicating that the individual spent consid-

erable time resting on the left side.
The cranium has pathological changes in the form of porotic hyperostosis, a
feature usually indicative of severe anemia (Ortner and Putschar 1981). On the inner
table, localized porosity and a thin deposit of reactive bone are characteristic of an
inflammatory process, possibly meningitis. Meningitis can be a complication of
tuberculosis and one that may have been the ultimate cause of death in this case
(Donald Ortner 2008, personal communication).
The disease experience exhibited in the bones of this bedridden subadult reflects
a hopeless, long-term illness that required continuous care. Mobility would have
been extremely limited and painful due to destruction and collapse of the spinal
column. Developmental delays associated with Pott’s disease would have occurred over
an extended period. Such extreme pathology is rare in the archaeological record.
A similar case from 1877 reports Pott’s disease of the upper vertebrae of a 10-year-old
girl diagnosed with the condition at age 19 months (Rutkow 1988). She was unable
to sit or stand without support (Fig. 7.10).
Fig. 7.9 Destructive lesions on the anterior and posterior surfaces of the sacrum of Burial 4
accompanied by reactive bone formation (Image: Smithsonian Institution)
Fig. 7.10 The late

nineteenth-century
photograph of a 10-year-
old girl suffering from a
spinal kyphosis similar to
that observed in Burial 4.
Her doctor provided the
following comment: “[she]
had been suffering from
Pott’s disease of the
cervical and upper dorsal
vertebrae since she was 19
months old—the result of a
fall. When I first examined
her I declined to attempt
any treatment, for I feared
it would be useless. The
child could neither sit nor
stand except by bearing her
weight upon her hands…
the pain was so great upon
the slightest touch of her
back…” (Image: Sayre
1877, 82)
Fig. 7.11 The mandible of

Burial 1 shows several
teeth with cavities; decay
in the first molars has
exposed the pulp
chambers. The lateral view
(below) shows the
undermined right first
molar crown with
resorption of the alveolus
and a sinus at the mesial
root tip from a periapical
abscess (Image:
Although no direct causal relationship between osteological and dental patholo-

gies should be assumed, perhaps the poor dental health of the juvenile and adult
male (Fig. 7.11) is attributable to an excessive intake of sweets or sugar given in
response to declining health or to medicine sweetened to make it more palatable.
One cannot help but feel the sadness and despair of the parents of this sick child,
whose efforts to comfort may have included sweet foods. This treatment would be
consistent with the great affection parents and family members frequently expressed
toward children in the eighteenth century (Smith 1980, 1985).
Heavy Metals
Eighteenth-century individuals are known to have ingested heavy metals (arsenic

and mercury, in particular) through medicinal treatments of disease conditions
(Edmonds 2012), like those described for the individuals buried at Darnall’s Chance.
Testing for evidence of such treatments includes evaluating the bones for the pres-
ence of arsenic, mercury, and lead. Arsenic and mercury have rarely been reported
in archaeological remains (Bruwelheide et al. 2016), but lead has been found in
skeletal samples from multiple historic-period sites (Aufderheide et al. 1981, 1985).
This metal was a historically common component in higher-status household items

used for food preparation, serving, and storage (e.g., lead-glazed pottery and pewter
vessels and utensils).
To determine whether heavy metals were present in significant amounts, bones
of Burials 1–4 underwent x-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) soon after their removal
from the crypt. The qualitative assessment of the elemental compositions of the
bones showed insignificant levels of arsenic and mercury, but did detect appreciable
amounts of lead in the bones of Burials 1 and 2.
In 2008, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was con-
ducted to compliment the previous XRF testing by providing more precise
quantitative results (Little et al. 2014). Two bone samples from each of Burials 1–4
were submitted (Table 7.4). The ICP-MS analyses detected little to no arsenic or
mercury. Despite the severe pathology in Burials 1 and 4, these individuals show no
bone evidence of ingesting medicines containing these metals, consistent with the
findings of the earlier XRF study. The amount of lead in Burials 1 and 2 is greater
than in Burials 3 and 4, but this difference is likely due to age, as lead accumulates
in the body over a lifetime (Aufderheide et al. 1981). The lead measured from these
four burials is consistent with higher-status individuals of the eighteenth century
(Aufderheide et al. 1985), but would not have resulted in debilitating side effects or
death. An individual with a normal bone ash lead content below 50 ppm would be
asymptomatic (Aufderheide 1989). The adult male and older female (mean lead
values 58.2 and 51.5, respectively) would have experienced only mild symptoms of
lead poisoning, if any.
Stable Isotopes
Stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope values were obtained1 for the five
oldest individuals (Burials 1–5) to determine country of origin and to add to the
growing isotopic database of early American diet that contains results from over
1
Tooth samples were processed at the National Museum of Natural History, and bone samples
were tested by the Augustana College Stable Isotope Lab and the Smithsonian’s Museum
Conservation Institute. The isotope results, especially from the bone samples, are comparable,
demonstrating consistency between these institutions. The methodologies of each laboratory differ
slightly but are generally as follows. Collagen extraction methods entailed removing surface con-
taminants followed by demineralization in 0.3 N hydrochloric acid at 4 °C, changing the acid daily
until reaction ceased. The collagen pseudomorph was rinsed to neutrality, treated with 5% sodium
hydroxide for 24 h at 4 °C, and again rinsed to neutrality. Approximately 100 mg of collagen were
gelatinized in 5 ml of water (pH 3) for 24 h at 90 °C. Water-soluble and water-insoluble phases
were separated by filtration, and the former was lyophilized and weighed to obtain a collagen
yield. The δ13Ccollagen and δ15Ncollagen values were determined by flash combustion to produce CO2
and N2 and measured against the appropriate reference gas on a VG SIRA 10 dual inlet mass spec-
trometer with Carlo Erba EA118 CHN interface. Stable isotope measurements and weight percent
C and N values were obtained from a single sample combustion. Analytical precision is ±0.1‰ for
carbon and ±0.2‰ for nitrogen. Bioapatite analysis involved grinding portions of the cleaned bone
130
Table 7.4 Heavy metals and stable isotope data

Arsenic Mercury Lead δ13Ccollagen δ15Ncollagen
Burial no. Sample (As) (Hg) (Pb) Sample (‰) (‰) wt.% N wt.% C C:N
1 Femur b.d. 0.2 52.7 Metacarpal −14.7 11.9 15.0 40.4 3.14
Femur 0.0 0.7 63.6 Femur −14.7 11.0 7.5 20.6 3.20
Premolar −12.9 11.1 15.6 45.3 3.39
2 Metatarsal 0.4 b.d. 39.3 Metacarpal −14.7 12.3 16.0 42.5 3.10
Femur b.d. b.d. 63.6 Femur −15.3 12.0 13.8 40.2 3.39
Molar −12.8 13.0 15.5 45.4 3.42
3 Metacarpal 0.3 b.d. 16.9 Metacarpal −14.3 11.2 13.3 36.0 3.16
Femur b.d. b.d. 28.7 Femur −13.7 10.9 14.3 40.3 3.28
Molar; incisor −13.1 11.7 15.4 45.2 3.42
4 Tibia 0.0 b.d. 33.0 Rib −14.0 11.1 14.0 37.7 3.14
Tibia 1.5 0.0 34.6 Tibia −13.9 11.3 12.4 35.3 3.33
Premolar −13.2 12.2 15.6 43.9 3.28
5 – – Rib −13.9 10.1 15.8 41.6 3.08
Canine; premolar −12.0 10.8 15.6 44.9 3.36
Metal results reported in parts per mil (ppm); b.d. indicates below detection. For isotope results, the C:N ratio (near the expected value of 3.2; van Klinken
1999) and the weight percent carbon and nitrogen values for all of the samples reflect good preservation with no perceptible diagenesis.
D.W. Owsley et al.
1500 individuals from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Human
Skeleton Database, Department of Anthropology, NMNH). It cannot be assumed
that all of the individuals recovered from the vault were American born and raised,
as two of Lettice’s husbands were from Scotland. Previous research has shown a
difference in the carbon isotope signatures of historic period Americans versus
western Europeans, with the former having more positive values (France et al. 2014;
Ubelaker and Owsley 2003). This variability is due to biochemical differences
between New World (maize) and Old World (wheat, barley, and rye) plants.
Populations reliant on New World resources and animals feeding on these plants
have more positive δ13C collagen values of around −10‰ to −9‰. Temperate cli-
mate plants and animals feeding on these grains have more negative δ13C values,
around −20‰ (Katzenberg and Pfeiffer 1995; Koch 1998; Roth and Hobson 2000;
van der Merwe 1982; Vogel and van der Merwe 1977). As the isotope signatures are
transferred through the food chain, human bone carbon isotope values characterize
place of origin. Supplementing this information are nitrogen stable isotopes, which
provide an indication of protein in the diet. While legumes and some algae have
δ15N values close to 0‰, other terrestrial and marine plants have δ15N values rang-
ing from +2 to +6‰. Tissues of consumers are enriched in δ15N by approximately
2–4‰ relative to the nitrogen values of their foods (DeNiro and Epstein 1981;
Minagawa and Wada 1984; Schoeninger 1985). As such, human consumers and
marine and terrestrial animals ecologically higher in food chains have higher δ15N
values. It should be noted that, due to bone remodeling, isotope samples from bone
provide information on diet and locality for the last decades of an individual’s life,
while tooth samples will yield data from childhood and adolescence since dentin
and enamel remain stable after formation.
Stable isotope results from Darnall’s Chance bone samples are presented in
Table 7.4. For the teeth and bone, the δ13C values have relatively narrow ranges. The
data are consistent with all individuals being American born and raised with tooth
and bone values showing a slight decrease in the δ13C value as individuals transi-
tioned to adult diets incorporating more C3 plants (e.g., wheat) and animals feeding
on these plants. Overall, the δ13C values from the bone and tooth samples are con-
sistent with a mixed diet of C3 and C4 plants and animals foddered on these plants.
The δ15N values are similar among the Darnall’s Chance individuals, with the
youngest person (Burial 5) having the lowest values. The mean δ15N value (+11.5‰;
sd = 0.8) is consistent with those obtained from other eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century high-status individuals from the mid-Atlantic.2
followed by submersion in 1.5% sodium hypochlorite for 48 h. The samples were rinsed to neutral-
ity, placed in 1 M acetic acid for 24 h, and again rinsed to neutrality. A minimum of 0.125 g of the
bioapatite was loaded into the side arm of a reaction vessel with 4 ml of 100% phosphoric acid
loaded into the straight arm of the vessel. Each vessel was evacuated, mixed, and incubated at
25 °C for 48 h. CO2 was collected by cryogenic distillation, and the δ13Capatite was determined by a
VG SIRA 10 dual inlet mass spectrometer.
2
Comparative sample includes Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC; Hilleary and Duvall
Family cemeteries, Maryland; and the remains of Philip Ludwell II recovered in Virginia. Data on
file, Department of Anthropology, NMNH.
Mitochondrial DNA
It was initially believed that information on births, deaths, and marriages would
provide adequate information to identify most, if not all, of the individuals interred
in the Darnall’s Chance vault. However, no information on the deaths of the infants
and children were found, and without genetic information, even the biological pro-
files of the adults could not be definitively matched to known individuals associated
with the property. One of the adult females recovered from the vault almost cer-
tainly represents Lettice Lee based on her longtime residency at Darnall’s Chance
and her daughters’ attachment to the vault expressed during the sale of the property.
DNA research began under this premise.
Initial testing in the early 2000s by Mitotyping Technologies extracted mito-
chondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Burials 1, 2, and 3 to investigate the maternal genea-
logical relationships of the adults from the Darnall’s Chance crypt. Mitochondrial
DNA passes to descendants through the female gamete and is inherited unchanged
(excepting mutations) within a maternal lineage (Holland and Parsons 1999; Melton
and Sensabaugh 2000; Pääbo et al. 2004; Pakendorf and Stoneking 2005).
Genealogical records established a living, eighth-generation descendant of Lettice
through an unbroken female line who could provide a reference source of mtDNA. A
cheek swab from the descendant yielded a complete mtDNA profile comprised of
nucleotide positions 15,998–16,400 (Hypervariable region I) and nucleotide posi-
tions 30–407 (Hypervariable region II), with mutations at 263, 309.1C and 315.1C
(Melton and Nelson 2005). This places the descendant in the H2a2a European mito-
chondrial haplotype.
Extraction of mtDNA from the skeletal samples followed standard procedures
and occurred prior to the analysis of the sample from the living descendant, elimi-
nating the possibility of cross-contamination. Initially, a left mandibular premolar
and right mandibular canine collected from Burial 2 were submitted for mtDNA
testing. The mtDNA extracted from the canine was minimal and yielded a mixture
containing two or more mtDNA profiles, indicating contamination. Additional steps
were taken during the pre-extraction cleaning of the premolar. The premolar’s DNA
was minimal and degraded, again yielding two or more potential mtDNA profiles.
Of the many possible combinations of nucleotides present in the mixture, the profile
of the modern descendent was among them.
In an effort to determine a more exact mtDNA identification, femur midshaft
samples from Burials 1, 2, and 3 were analyzed. Samples of femoral midshafts all
yielded mtDNA, ranging from partial to full profiles due to varying sample degrada-
tion. However, all three burials contained conflicting nucleotide base-calls yielding
two or more potential mtDNA profiles. The profile from Burial 1 resulted in partial
Hypervariable I and II regions, but did not yield data to compare with the mutations
found in the descendant. The profile of Burial 2 also resulted in partial Hypervariable
I and II regions, and Burial 3 provided a full profile. One profile identified in Burials
2 and 3 matched that of the modern descendant, but results could not conclusively
identify the descendant as a maternal relative. The data simply did not exclude this
individual as one.
In 2016, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Ancient DNA laboratory3

undertook additional mtDNA testing of the bone from the Darnall’s Chance vault.
Although most of the remains were returned to the vault by this time, some samples
were retained. New extraction protocols developed since the initial DNA testing
increased the probability of successful mtDNA extraction and sequencing. This sec-
ond attempt to extract mtDNA tested a femur sample from Burial 4, which was not
included in the first round of testing.
The entire mitochondrial control region (15986–561) of Burial 4 was sequenced
revealing mutations at 16519T, 263G, 309.1C, and 315.1C. This is characteristic of
the H2a2a haplotype shared with the modern descendant. Although the 16519T
mutation identified in Burial 4 was not originally sequenced in the descendant, it is
a common mutation that is not diagnostic of mitochondrial haplotype H2a2a. The
mtDNA haplotype of Burial 4, therefore, is identical to the modern descendant,
indicating a high probability of direct maternal relatedness.
Although mtDNA is not a unique identifier alone, individuals sharing a maternal
lineage will have the same mtDNA profile. It is still possible that an individual
selected at random who does not share a maternal relationship with the descendant
could have the same haplotype. However, that situation is unlikely based on the co-
occurrence of documentary and genetic evidence for the Darnall’s Chance series.
The corresponding mitochondrial control region mutations in Burials 1, 2, 3, and 4
and the living descendant strongly suggest that the individuals represented in the
burial vault at Darnall’s Chance all share a common matrilineal line linked to Lettice
Lee Wardrop Thomson Sim.
Naming the Past
Mitochondrial DNA and the skeletal profile compiled through osteological analysis
support the identification of Burial 2 as Lettice Lee. Lettice died at Darnall’s Chance
1 year after marrying her third husband, Joseph Sim. The Maryland Gazette of 11
April 1776 carried her obituary:
3
The University of Tennessee’s Ancient DNA lab is designed to prevent foreign contamination
using UV lights, unidirectional air flow, mandatory personal protective equipment, and separate
extraction and PCR rooms. The Burial 4 femur sample was soaked in bleach to eliminate surface
contamination and powdered for DNA extraction using liquid nitrogen and Freezer Mill technol-
ogy. DNA was extracted using the Dabney et al.protocol, which uses EDTA-based binding buffer
and silica spin columns to bind DNA in solution. The mtDNA control region was amplified using
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with 11 primer pairs, resulting in fragments approximately 100–
200 base pairs in length. The sample was then purified using ExoSAP protocols and sequenced on
Sanger platforms. The sample was successfully extracted and amplified without contamination,
verified by the negative extraction and PCR controls. The Burial 4 mtDNA haplotype was charac-
terized using Sequencher® 5.4.6 (Gene Codes Corporation (n.d.) and Haplogrep (Weissensteiner
et al. 2016) programs. The entire mitochondrial control region (15986–561) was sequenced with
1–6x coverage. The Burial 4 haplotype did not match the mitochondrial profiles from persons
handling the samples.
On Wednesday the 3rd instant died Mrs. Sim, wife of Col. Joseph Sim of this county, of a
very painful and lingering illness, which she supported with uncommon firmness and reso-
lution. This Lady possessed many virtues, accomplishments, and valuable qualities, in a
very high degree: her disconsolate husband and children, and numerous relatives and
friends, are left to lament their loss.
There is no firm birthdate for Lettice, but it is estimated that she was born in 1726
or 1727, making her around 50 years old when she died. The skeletal remains of
Burial 2 are identified as those of a female, aged 45–54, years born and raised in the
Chesapeake. No other adult in the vault has these criteria. Although not severely
modified by disease, the noticeably light weight of the bones may be linked to
reduced mobility and appetite caused by the “lingering illness” mentioned in her
obituary.
As noticeable effort was invested in the unique and specially built sub-crypt, it
was initially proposed that the man buried there (Burial 1, aged 30 years) was a
husband of Lettice. Osteological analysis, however, immediately ruled out all three
of her spouses who were older than 30 years at their respective times of death. This
conclusion corresponds with other information, including likely burial locations
elsewhere for her three husbands, and isotope data indicating that the man in Burial
1 was born and raised in America (eliminating Wardrop and Thomson, both born
and raised in Scotland, as possibilities). Furthermore, genetic evidence demon-
strates that this burial has a maternal relationship with Burial 2. Since Lettice had no
recorded male offspring that survived into adulthood, the mtDNA results indicate
that this man was likely one of her eight siblings.
Lettice had four brothers; John, George, and Corbin Lee were older than 35 years
at the time of their deaths and are not a match for the biological profile of Burial 1.
Her remaining brother, Hancock Lee, was an unmarried merchant who lived in the
nearby port town of Nottingham, Maryland. His obituary appeared in the Maryland
Gazette on 15 November 1759: “On Sunday the 4th instant, died at Upper
Marlborough, after a tedious illness, much regretted by all who knew him, Mr.
Hancock Lee, merchant, of Nottingham; a gentleman of a very fair character.”
While not included in the obituary, an 1868 letter describing the text of a family
mourning ring provides Hancock’s age at death, “Hancock Lee died 1759 age 32”
(Lee 1868), which fits the osteological assessment of this burial. The phrase “tedious
illness” was common in death notices from the 1500s until as recently as the 1930s.
Sometimes notices provided a specific illness, such as dropsy, consumption, kidney
stones, or dysentery, but it was more common to find the condition unspecified.
Paleopathological analysis of this skeleton indicated this man suffered from tertiary
stage syphilis combined with a chronic, pyogenic osteomyelitis of the right tibia due
to a secondary infection. This staph or strep infection would have caused severe, if
intermittent, aches and pain. Open wounds resulting from the draining tibia would
have required frequent bandage changes. Due to the extent of skeletal involvement,
it is possible that he had the treponemal infection for at least a decade and had simi-
larly endured the leg infection for multiple years. This condition would certainly fit
the definition of a “tedious illness.” Osteological and biographical information indi-
cates that the man in the sub-crypt is likely Hancock Lee.
Burial 3 was maternally related to Burials 1 (Hancock Lee) and 2 (Lettice Lee),
and skeletal data indicate that this was a female aged 20–22 years. These remains
likely represent Lettice’s sister Elizabeth, who was unmarried and presumed child-
less when she died in 1752 at the age of 22. Lettice’s other sisters, Alice, Hannah,
and Margaret, were all older than 22 years when they died. At the time of Elizabeth’s
death, Lettice had only lived at Darnall’s Chance for about 5 years. The vault would
have been in its early period of use and Elizabeth may have been the first placed
inside. This is congruent with excavation data that places the coffin of Burial 3
directly on the floor in the far northeast corner. This region would have been diffi-
cult to access once other remains were interred. All other coffins had brick sup-
ports, suggesting the need for piers was recognized once the first coffin showed
signs of deterioration from contact with the damp floor. In addition, recovery docu-
mentation notes that Burial 2 (Lettice) followed Burial 3 in time; the sidewalls of
the two coffins were adjacent, but offset, with Burial 2’s coffin wall slightly above
that of Burial 3.
It has not been possible to identify by name the two subadults and four infants
recovered from the vault (Burials 4–9), but one could speculate how they may be
related to the Lee family. Burials 1, 2, and 3 (siblings Hancock, Lettice, and
Elizabeth Lee) share a maternal relationship with Burial 4 through mtDNA analysis.
Based on gestation period, birth spacing, and family history, Burial 4 is not likely a
child from Lettice’s second marriage to Thomson. During the eighteenth century,
married women were pregnant approximately every 30 months during their child-
bearing years (Kulikoff 1986; Walsh 1985). Lettice and Thomson were married
between April and July 1762, and their first child was born in 1763, 1764, or 1765
(Alice) and their second in January 1767 (Mary). It is possible that Lettice could
have been pregnant and carried a child to term in the few years between her mar-
riage and Alice’s conception. In this scenario, the child, who lived to approximately
12–14 years of age, would have been alive at the time of Thomson’s death. Thomson,
however, mentions only Alice and Mary in his will.
Burial 4 could be a child of Lettice and James Wardrop, although they were mar-
ried for over 12 years and no records identify children from this union. However,
given the frequency of pregnancy in the 1700s and Lettice’s demonstrated ability to
conceive, the Wardrop household likely experienced a devastating rate of infant and/
or childhood mortality that may have included this sick child. While adult longevity
had improved from the seventeenth century, the youngest segments of the population
were still at risk of complications before and after birth or of contracting and dying
from malaria and other diseases in the Chesapeake environment (Kulikoff 1986).
During this time, one in five Euro-American children died before 5 years of age, and,
of the four remaining, another would not survive to be 20 (Kulikoff 1986; Walsh
1985). An intriguing piece of information links children, and perhaps the sick child
(Burial 4), to this couple. The inventory of Wardrop’s estate (Maryland State Archives
1760) lists two “nursing chairs,” one of which was in the master bedroom. Nursing
chairs were designed with shortened legs for ease in handling infants. Occasionally
they were also advertised as useful furniture for dealing with sickness (Evans 1997)
and so may have been used for care of Lettice’s siblings as well as her own child. No
mention of sons or nephews who could be candidates for Burial 4 are in the wills of
Lettice, Wardrop, Thomson, or Hancock, nor do these individuals make provisions
for the care of a crippled invalid. Given the morbid condition of this adolescent, per-
haps it was realized early in the child’s life that such a gesture was futile.
The younger juvenile and four infants could also be children from Lettice’s mar-
riage to Wardrop and less likely from her marriage to Thomson. It is also possible
that the remains of the unidentified children were those born to Lettice’s daughters
Alice and Mary, who married in 1781 and in 1782, respectively. Both women had
children who survived to adulthood; however, they were each married for over
5 years before any document relates children to these unions. The remains of the
infants were not part of the mtDNA study as the potential results would not differ-
entiate between Lettice and her daughters, who would have shared the same mtDNA,
although future DNA research could clarify these relationships. These children
were born and died without entering the written record.
Discussion
The true manner in which eighteenth-century burial vaults were used (i.e., who was
selected for burial in these structures) is rarely known from historical documents or
archaeological excavation. This study illustrates how details of use are obtainable
through bioarchaeological methods that link archaeology, analysis of human
remains, and historical documentation. Burial in these high-status crypts reflects a
complexity of circumstances related to convenience and kinship and, in this case,
high infant and childhood mortality.
The assumption that the patriarch of the estate is central to the relationship of
those interred in a vault was incorrect in the case of the Darnall’s crypt. While James
Wardrop likely commissioned the burial vault at Darnall’s Chance when he built the
house in the early 1740s, he was not interred there. In fact, with the probable excep-
tion of offspring that did not survive, Wardrop is not related to any of the individuals
buried in the vault. Instead, data collected directly from the skeletal remains in
conjunction with historical and genealogical information, identify these burials as
biological relations of the female head of household, Lettice Lee, Wardrop’s wife
and longtime inhabitant of Darnall’s Chance.
The relationships of the adults in the Darnall’s Chance vault reflect family structure
in eighteenth-century America and the role of females as caretakers and kin-keepers
within society. With declining mortality rates, adult sibling relationships became more
common, unlike in the previous century when many individuals did not survive into
adulthood. In fact, during the eighteenth century, only the bonds between parents and
adult children were stronger than those between adult siblings (Hemphill 2011; Smith
1980). Hemphill (2011, 41) notes that interestingly “Close adult sibling relations
received little support from the larger culture, since resolutely patriarchal Euro-
Americans produced and consumed very little literature that addressed sibling rela-
tions,” yet this did not prevent siblings from keeping close ties, even after they married.
The presence of Lettice’s brother Hancock and sister Elizabeth in the vault at
Darnall’s Chance indicates a strong relationship between these siblings. Lettice
was the oldest of nine children from her father Philip Lee’s second marriage to
Elizabeth Lawson Sewall. Her four brothers and four sisters became orphaned in
1748, shortly after Lettice’s marriage to Wardrop. It is conceivable that Lettice
assumed the role of caretaker for her younger siblings at this time, especially dur-
ing Elizabeth and Hancock’s illnesses prior to their deaths in 1752 and 1759.
During the eighteenth century, it was typical for family members to rely on each
other for medical needs, and families could become closer through the process of
birth, care, death, and grief (Smith 1980). In offering medical care and support for
her siblings, Lettice was practicing active kin-keeping, defined as “the work –
usually conducted by adult siblings – of preserving contact between the nuclear
units of extended families” (Hemphill 2011, 47). The burial at Darnall’s Chance
that Lettice provided for her siblings can be viewed as an extension of her actions
taken in life. While available information portrays Lettice’s kin-keeping as the
most visible among the Lee siblings, efforts to this end were historically taken by
both males and females (Hemphill 2011).
The bond between eighteenth-century women and their brothers was especially
significant (Hemphill 2011; Smith 1980). Brothers sometimes participated in their
sisters’ courtships, and this sibling relationship remained important for financial
and emotional reasons even after a woman married. Based on clues in Hancock’s
will and obituary, it seems these circumstances applied to Hancock and Lettice. In
his will, Hancock Lee, who was unmarried, distributed his personal effects to his
full sisters and brothers. When he died in 1759, he willed 100 pounds sterling to
four of his five sisters listed by their married names. The only sister not listed in this
document was Elizabeth, who preceded him in death (Lee 1893). In a separate para-
graph, he willed everything remaining, including his real estate, to his sister Lettice.
Given that he died in Upper Marlboro (as indicated by his obituary), rather than
Nottingham (where he resided), the generous provisions of his will suggest Lettice
nursed him in his final illness before burying him in the sub-crypt in the vault at
Darnall’s Chance. There is no evidence to address this especially elaborate burial.
Wardrop may have included the sub-crypt during the original construction of the
vault, perhaps intended for his own future interment, or it may have been added at
the time of Hancock’s death.
In her own will, Lettice expressed care and concern for her sister, Margaret
Symmer. Lettice identified Margaret’s son Alexander as a primary heir in the event
of the death of both of her daughters. Providing for a brother or sister’s child was a
common extension of the sibling relationship. Lettice even specified that “…if from
the management of my estate over and above a sufficient maintenance for my chil-
dren and without encroaching on the principal thereof, they can spare anything to
the support of my sister Symmer and her children, that they will apply such part
thereof for that purpose as they in their discretion may think fit” (Prince George’s
County Court Records 1776). She also left a portrait of Hancock Lee to her nephew,
his namesake, the son of her brother John. It was not uncommon for siblings to
name their children after one another (Hemphill 2011).
Lettice’s choice to bury Hancock and Elizabeth in the vault at Darnall’s Chance
is a reflection of their sibling bond and is consistent with eighteenth-century funer-
ary rituals, indicating the “growing primacy of family and kin sentiment” (Smith
1980). Future analysis of burial vaults should consider the complexity of these rela-
tionships and how they may confound attempts at identification. At the same time,
burial archaeology may be an avenue for exploring kinship dynamics of the past.
Another avenue for exploration is an individual’s role within these kinship sys-
tems as they relate to ancestry, class, and gender. During Lettice’s life in the eigh-
teenth century, domestic patriarchalism emerged as the Euro-American population
stabilized, and the slave trade increased. It was no longer necessary for higher-
status women to participate in basic operational tasks, such as laboring in the
tobacco fields (Kulikoff 1986; Norton 1984). Historians (Berkin 1996, 1997;
Fawver 2006; Gundersen and Gampel 1982; Norton 1984; Speth 1983; Sturtz
2002) have examined women’s active responses to this patriarchalism, which
positioned men above women in both the family and the law and delineated eco-
nomic roles for men to the public realm and, for women, to the domestic (Kulikoff
1986; Sturtz 2002).
In general, women are viewed as being subjugated by this ideology. Legally,
wives were considered femes covert, meaning that they could not operate indepen-
dently from their husbands, and required his permission in order to enter into con-
tracts, leave a will, or sell or purchase land (Mays 2004; Speth 1983). Unmarried
women (femes sole) were not subject to these restrictions, but this did not necessarily
result in easy lives for spinsters or widows in the 1700s. Compared to the previous
century, widows were willed less property by their husbands; property and person-
alty (movable, personal property) could be lost under widowhood restrictions
included in wills; widows were not usually the sole executors of their late husband’s
wills; and widows could be willed less than her dower share (Carr 1989; Sturtz
2002). A widow’s dower was one third of her husband’s property and, in Maryland,
also one third of his personal property, which included slaves (Salmon 1983, 1986;
Walsh 1985). If her husband did not provide the legally required dower, a widow
could renounce the will and sue for her “thirds.” The ability to claim her dower
secured stability for the widow but also served to alleviate the public burden of poor
women and minor children (Speth 1983).
While the eighteenth century posed challenges to all women, some were able
to assert varying degrees of independence. In some circumstances, married
women could participate in legal transactions either in lieu of their husbands, as
comanagers of family business with their husbands and/or as managers of their
own business operations (Gundersen and Gampel 1982). Although, it was usually
in widowhood that women had the best opportunity for freedom as heads of
household (Fawver 2006; Speth 1983; Sturtz 2002). Female heads of household,
however, were at greater risk of poverty than their male counterparts (Fawver
2006; Smith 1994).
Evidence suggests that within the patriarchal landscape of the eighteenth cen-
tury, Lettice Lee, like many women of the past and present, functioned as the central
figure in her household in both life and death. Documents reveal Lettice’s early
efforts to assert economic independence in 1760 after the death of her first husband
James Wardrop. He bequeathed to Lettice, with no restrictions, “all the balance of
estate, personal estate whatsoever and wheresoever” (Wardrop 1759, 1760 ), includ-
ing the house, his store and warehouses, £2,500 worth of household items, over
17,000 acres of land, 32 slaves, and debts owed him in excess of £12,000.
Interestingly, Lettice renounced the will and took only “that part of his Estate which
the Law allows and gives to Widows” (Prince George’s County Court Records
1760), or a third each of real and personal property. Because of this, Lettice declined
significant assets, including Darnall’s Chance, which were transferred to Wardrop’s
nephew in Scotland, his only surviving relative. The nephew permitted Lettice to
continue living on the property an d he retained ownership until Lettice’s second
husband purchased Darnall’s Chance. While Lettice’s reason for renouncing
Wardrop’s will is not known she made an active choice on her own behalf within an
inheritance system that presupposed women were reliant on and subordinate to men
(Salmon 1986).
Lettice and Dr. Adam Thomson married in 1762, with the rare prenuptial agree-
ment (Mays 2004). Records show that premarital arrangements were uncommon in
South Carolina and Maryland and especially so in Connecticut and Pennsylvania
(Mays 2004; Salmon 1983). When they were employed, it was usually by a wealthy
widow taking action to keep her existing estate separate from that of her new hus-
band. The agreement between Lettice and Thomson stipulated that she would retain
ownership of her land and personalty and that she would not claim any of Thomson’s
wealth if he died before her. When he died 5 years later in 1767, he willed “all the
rest of my estate, real and personal, in New York or Maryland, to my daughters,
Alice Corbet Thomson and Mary Lee Thomson” (Thomson 1767), who were aged
approximately 3 years and 1 year, respectively. Lettice was the executrix of
Thomson’s will regarding his Maryland property, while two men from New York
served as executors responsible for Thomson’s holdings in that state.
For the next 8 years, Lettice served as the head of the household at Darnall’s
Chance, although the residence was technically owned by her young daughters.
Operational costs were likely supported by Wardrop’s dower (which included 32
slaves) and wealth that Lettice inherited from her brother, Hancock Lee, all of which
Lettice retained through her prenuptial agreement with Thomson. Lettice also dis-
tilled and sold rum at the house and, in 1774, even sued an individual, John Cloyne,
for nonpayment (Prince George’s County Court Records 1774). Lettice oversaw
other domestic industries, such as butter and soap production, and sold off land
when needed.
In 1775, Lettice married her third husband, Colonel Joseph Sim, again with a
prenuptial agreement allowing her to leave a will:
…I the said Lettice should have full power and absolute authority to convey by deed, in my
life time, or by any other instrument of writing, duly published, all the estate real and per-
sonal, of which I was possessed at the time of my marriage with the said Joseph Sim (sub-
ject to certain conditions therein expressed) over and above the sum of three hundred and
ninety two pounds current money therein mentioned… (Prince George’s County Court
Records 1776).
It has been speculated that this marriage between lifelong friends was intended to
provide legal guardianship for Lettice’s young daughters after her death. Following a
little more than a year of marriage, Lettice died from what has been described as a “very
painful and lingering illness” (Maryland Gazette 1776). It is conceivable that Lettice
was already suffering from this sickness in 1775, and she suspected she was close to
death, prompting the marriage to Sim. She provided the 392 pounds mentioned in her
will to him, presumably to provide for Alice and Mary. With few exceptions, Lettice
gave equal shares of her real and personal property to her daughters Alice and Mary.
Lettice Lee is not the only example of a woman who was able to assert indepen-
dence while operating within the confines of eighteenth-century patriarchalism, but
her experience was atypical. Lettice’s actions demonstrate that she had no desire to
make financial gains through marriage, and she accepted only the legal minimum
dower following Wardrop’s death. When Lettice married again, she utilized the rare
prenuptial agreement to secure feme sole status until her death. In her marriage to
Thomson, this agreement protected Lettice’s wealth, but it was also through this
document that she willingly declined an inheritance from him. Like most female
heads of households, Lettice did attain this position through widowhood, but at a
younger age than most, and she was not at risk of poverty. It is important to acknowl-
edge Lettice’s socioeconomic class and Euro-American ancestry as factors that
allowed her to maintain this particular position. The Lees were an elite family, and
Lettice’s inheritance from her brother Hancock, as well as Wardrop, contributed to
her financial solvency and independence. Additionally, Lettice was a slave owner;
while the status she attained for herself never reached the male equivalent, she cer-
tainly had a considerable degree of power over her slaves within the “layered hier-
archy” of eighteenth-century patriarchalism (Sturtz 2002, 11). Legally and
economically, this included subjugation by gender, class, and race. Within this sys-
tem, women of African descent were allotted the least power.
Lettice created for herself a life with freedom and independence not commonly
enjoyed by women of the eighteenth century, but it is critical to note that she and
other women in similar positions did not possess “…economic or political power as
women. For economic purposes, women simply became men in the absence of men.
This status, albeit limited, may have provided planter wives with some measure of
independence and power within a patriarchal society” (Fawver 2006, 462). While
asserting herself legally and economically, it is clear that Lettice still assumed the
traditional domestic role of mother and caregiver. Care for her adult siblings
occurred during her first marriage to Wardrop. Their illnesses and death would have
coincided with possible failed attempts to conceive and raise healthy children of her
own. It is probable that Lettice was also the mother of the sick child with tuberculo-
sis, whom she would have nursed for years, only to see the child succumb to death.
In this regard, she not only was tasked with caring for and eventually burying her
siblings, but like many other women in early British America, she likely buried her
own children as well. Her obituary describes Lettice as managing her illness with
“uncommon firmness and resolution.” It seems she applied these characteristics in
other areas of her public and private life as she balanced responsibilities that one
would view as no less challenging in present day.
Conclusion
This bioarchaeological analysis of the subterranean burial vault at Darnall’s Chance

provides new data on an eighteenth-century Maryland family and its historic resi-
dence. This rare example of a professionally excavated crypt clearly challenges the
supposition that the remains of prominent individuals can be easily identified using
documentary evidence alone. Information relating to the lives and deaths of even
high-status individuals often went unnoted in the written record. However, an inter-
disciplinary synthesis of data acquired from the archaeological investigation, his-
torical research, skeletal analysis, and chemical testing allowed for the identification
of some individuals interred at Darnall’s Chance.
The data also provide a better understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century
health care, morbidity, and causes of death. The absence of documented birth
and death dates for children likely reflects the realization that many lives
would be short during this period of high infant and child mortality, evidenced
by the number of juveniles recovered from the vault. Referrals to illnesses or
causes of death and treatments of these conditions were nonexistent or at best
vague, even for heart-rending situations that engendered prolonged suffering
and debility.
While burials at Darnall’s Chance demonstrate mortuary customs reserved for
wealthy, landowning families in the Chesapeake, the vault provides a rare, personal
perspective on roles of women in society and in the family that enhances what can
be known from historic documents. Lettice Lee had a prominent role in caring for
and burying the dead. Through her family relationships and marriages, Lettice
strongly influenced who was buried in the crypt, where they were placed, and who
inherited the land in which it was built. Her life and death represent a unique inter-
section of gender, class, and race in the eighteenth-century America.
Acknowledgments Archaeological excavation of this skeletal series was completed under the
direction of Donald Creveling, The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission-
Archaeology Program. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this investigation.
Barbara Sikora, Assistant Director (retired) of the Darnall’s Chance House Museum, provided
historical documentation and genealogical information on the Lee family. Robert Mann, Arthur
Aufderheide, and Donald Ortner helped identify and interpret skeletal pathology. Ethne Barnes
identified the sacral cleft of Burial 4. Charles Tumosa and Melanie Feather, Smithsonian
Museum Conservation Institute, conducted the XRF survey of the femoral cortices, and Nicole
Little conducted the ICP-MS analysis. Terry Melton and Kimberlyn Nelson of Mitotyping
Technologies, Inc. conducted the initial mtDNA comparisons. Dr. Graciela Cabana and Frankie
West provided training and ancient DNA facilities at the University of Tennessee for mtDNA
testing in 2016. Sandra Schlachtmeyer helped prepare this manuscript. Sara Devine assisted
with background research. The following photographers contributed images used as figures in
this chapter: Chip Clark (Figs. 7.1 and 7.4), Jack Boucher (Fig. 7.5), Brittney Tatchell (Figs. 7.7
and 7.9), and Jenn Bertelsen (Fig. 7.6 and 7.11). Kristen Montaperto provided the M-NCPPC
maps digitized in Fig. 7.3 by Kate D. Sherwood. Stephen Rouse produced the digital 3D models
in Figs. 7.6 and 7.8. Kate D. Sherwood prepared these figures for publication. We are indebted
to the Lee family descendants for their support, especially the individual who provided a mtDNA
sample.
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Chapter 8
‘A Mass of Crooked Alphabets’:
The Construction and Othering of Working
Class Bodies in Industrial England
Rebecca Gowland
Contents
Introduction 147
Case Study 1: Phossy Jaw and Matchmaking 150
Case Study 2: Pauper Apprentices – North Yorkshire 152
Discussion: Industrialised Bodies 156
Conclusion 159
References 160
Introduction
Health is a matter of social justice. This was the conclusion of the UK Government’s
review of the social determinants of health, entitled ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’
(Marmot 2010). It is a powerful statement which explicitly recognises that health is
not only a matter of personal responsibility but is jeopardised through inequitable
social structures. Research on the social gradient in health is well established for the
industrialised world, with a large body of evidence revealing shorter life expectan-
cies and higher levels of chronic disease amongst the very poorest (e.g. Marmot
et al. 1984; Adler et al. 1994). It is not the overall wealth of a nation that is the issue
but the distribution of social and economic capital within: the less equal a society,
the greater the health disparities between the rich and the poor (Adler and Ostrove
1999; Wilkinson 1999; Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). It is unanimous: poverty kills
(Krieger et al. 1997; Wilkinson 2006; Marmot 2010, 10).
Social class permeates almost every aspect of life: diet, occupation/activities,
child care, housing, exposure to pollutants, psychosocial stress, as well as embodied
social interactions (Krieger and Davy Smith 2004; Blane 2006). Furthermore,
inequalities of power are known to constrain the agency, actions and ability of the
R. Gowland (*)
Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK
e-mail: rebecca.gowland@dur.ac.uk

148 R. Gowland
poor and marginalised to escape poverty (Farmer 2004). ‘Social justice’ within the
context of public health refers to the ‘fair disbursement of common advantages and
the sharing of common burdens’ (Gostin and Powers 2006, 1054). To attain social
justice, hardships facing people of lower social status need to be identified and alle-
viated. In many post-industrial countries today, however, there lacks a strong politi-
cal will to proactively address inequality under the remit of social justice – of
fairness – because health is viewed to be an individualised rather than a collective
risk. Poor health is widely conceptualised as arising, either from an individual’s
dubious life choices, or genetic disadvantage (Gostin and Powers 2006; Farmer
2004). This stance shifts responsibility for personal well-being from societal struc-
tures and onto individuals. In so doing, the state is able to absolve itself of the
responsibility and imperative to tackle structural imbalances (Symonds 2011).
Fortuitously, it is a political position which resonates with the population at large,
and past UK government interventions into national health issues such as obesity,
smoking and even vaccination have frequently led to resistance from both public
and private stakeholders and a general condemnation of the ‘nanny state’.
In the UK, public attitudes towards the poorest individuals in society became
more altruistic throughout the twentieth century, as testified by the instigation of the
National Health Service and a burgeoning of the welfare state. Since the turn of the
noughties, however, there has been a notable drop in public approval for spending
on the poor, decreasing from 61% in 1989 to 30% in 2014 (Taylor-Gooby and
Taylor 2017). This is perhaps not surprising within a tabloid culture that regularly
demonises benefit claimants as ‘lazy freeloaders’ (second only to the vilification of
‘migrants’). Such sentiments are reinforced by the current dominance of right-of-
centre political rhetoric and the ever-increasing restrictions and cuts to unemploy-
ment and disability benefits (Stuckler and Basu 2013; Harkins and Ludo-Ocando
2016). Striking parallels can be observed in the political language used to character-
ise the poor in today’s society and during the nineteenth century. In Victorian
England, a marked shift in public perceptions from the ‘deserving poor’ to ‘unde-
serving scroungers’ also occurred from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth cen-
turies (Tihelková 2015). This was exemplified by the 1834 alterations to the Poor
Laws, in which the ‘moral failings’ of the poor came to be addressed within the
confines of workhouses that included regimens and diets deliberately designed to be
punitive (Tihelková 2015).
This chapter will focus on the ‘othering’ and denigration of the lower working
classes during the rapid industrialisation of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth
centuries in England. It will focus particularly on the embodied consequences of
child labour for forging perceptions of the social order as ‘natural’ and biologically
grounded (c.f. Krieger 2005; Rose and Hatzenbuehler 2009). Here the degraded,
degenerate and expendable bodies of working class children came to epitomise the
worst excesses of the Victorian industrial machine.
In nineteenth-century England, health inequalities were more pronounced than
today, with epidemic and endemic infectious diseases particularly rife amongst the
lower classes due to inadequate housing, sanitation and poor diet (Brimblecombe
1978; Hudson 1992; Newman and Gowland 2016). Life expectancy was as low as
8 ‘A Mass of Crooked Alphabets’: The Construction and Othering of Working Class… 149
15 years for some labourers working in Liverpool, and as late as the early twentieth
century, 13-year-old girls from working class families were seven centimetres
shorter than girls from better-off backgrounds (Wohl 1983, 13). In common with
present-day viewpoints, the Victorian poor were considered to be personally cul-
pable for their woeful state of health; it was considered to be a product of their
unwillingness to better themselves, their poor dietary choices and risky behaviours
(cf. Chadwick 1842).
Choice is an important word here: those with more power and social capital have
a tendency to ascribe a great deal more freedom of choice to the lower classes than
actually exists, because they themselves are not accustomed to constraint – surely
the poor could get a job if they chose to, they could eat healthier food if they chose
too. Yet it was very evidently not a matter of choice when the poor were bereft of the
opportunities and resources that provided both prospects and protection for those
higher up the social ladder.
Farmer’s (2004) concept of structural violence works well within the context of
Victorian England: this was a social environment which constricted, constrained
and ‘garrotted’ the agency of the poor and marginalised (ibid: 315). There were
severe physiological repercussions to this inequity, which in the late nineteenth cen-
tury led to the formation of the ‘Interdepartmental Committee on Physical
Deterioration’ whose remit was to assess whether the physical form of the nation
was (as feared) degenerating. This was a genuine concern, because of the very vis-
ible ‘crooked’ physiologies of poor, urban children and factory workers and the
failure of many adults to reach the minimum height standards required by the mili-
tary. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Committee reported (1904, 296–297)
that there was not a universal degradation of the nation; rather only the poor were
physically lacking. This, it stated, was a consequence of their ‘laziness, want of
thrift, ignorance of household management, and particularly the choice and prepara-
tion of food, filth, indifference to parental obligations, drunkenness’ vices that
‘press with terrible severity onto their children’. Poverty carried a weighty moral
charge. The poor during this time were conceptualised almost as a separate species,
and poverty was considered a naturalised form of biological inferiority (similar to
race), rather than the result of grinding social subjugation.
During the industrial revolution in England, greater proportions of children –
some as young as 6 years of age – began to work away from the domestic sphere, in
factories and mines. In many industries, children were exposed to toxic environ-
mental pollutants, as well as physical hazards, some of which resulted in horrific
and occasionally fatal bodily deformities. The significance of these occupational
and poverty-related diseases for the construction of working class embodied identi-
ties has, to date, received very little attention within the archaeological literature.
Two bioarchaeological case studies will be used to illustrate this interrelationship:
the first is the skeleton of a child excavated from a Quaker cemetery in Northeast
England, with probable phosphorus necrosis of the jaw (known as ‘phossy jaw’), a
notorious occupational condition associated with the matchmaking industry, and the
second includes the skeletal remains of a group of children excavated from a church-
yard in North Yorkshire, likely to have been pauper apprentices working in the local
150 R. Gowland
textile mill. These case studies will highlight a range of biological consequences of
child labour, as well as the intergenerational implications of poverty and marginali-
sation. It will situate this bioarchaeological evidence within nineteenth-century
social viewpoints regarding the biological and moral inferiority of the lower classes.
Following Charlesworth (1999) and Farmer (2004), it will draw upon the work of
theorists such as Bourdieu (1977, 1986) to discuss the habitus of the very poor dur-
ing this period. Finally, it will examine the ways in which these damaged, immature
bodies were then harnessed to become a powerful weapon for social reform.
Case Study 1: Phossy Jaw and Matchmaking
The site of Coach Lane, North Shields, just east of Newcastle upon Tyne was a
former Quaker burial ground (c.1711–1857 AD) (Fig. 8.1). North Shields in the
early nineteenth century was heavily industrialised, with high levels of air and water
pollution from the various industries, which included pottery, glassmaking and iron.
Conditions within the town were dilapidated in many parts, with slum areas close to
the quayside, and overcrowding and poor sanitation commonly due to the massive
rise in population throughout the nineteenth century. The Coach Lane burial ground
was excavated in 2010 and comprised 236 individuals, including 81 non-adults
(Procter et al. 2014). Skeleton 69 is the remains of a child aged 12–14 years, who
was buried in the normative fashion for this religion, extended and supine, in a
Fig. 8.1 Map of sites

simple earth-cut grave (Roberts et al. 2016). Analysis of the skeleton by our team at
Durham University showed evidence of overall poor health throughout childhood
in the form of enamel hypoplasia, rickets, possible scurvy and growth stunting.
The most dramatic pathological lesions, however, were observed on the mandible,
with the presence of a large destructive lesion to the left side, extensive new woven
bone across the entire mandible, but focussed mostly on the left, and a large piece
of necrotic bone (sequestrum) contained within the lesion (see Roberts et al. 2016).
In addition, prolific new woven bone formation was observed on the right ulna,
radius and humerus, focussed around the elbow joint. Destructive lesions were also
observed on the vertebrae, and new woven bone formation was present on the ribs,
clavicles and scapulae. A detailed pathological description of this skeleton is
provided by Roberts et al. (2016).
A comparison by the author of Skeleton 69’s mandibular lesions to those from
known clinical examples of phossy jaw sufferers curated at the odonatological col-
lection at the Royal College of Surgeons in London demonstrated striking similari-
ties, making this condition a likely diagnosis (though see Roberts et al. 2016 for a
full differential diagnosis). Phosphorus ingestion was associated primarily with the
nineteenth-century matchmaking industry. ‘Strike anywhere’ matches were a sig-
nificant invention of the industrial age, and phosphorus was a key ingredient to
facilitate ignition of the matchstick. Labour in match factories was unskilled, poorly
paid and generally attracted only the very poorest labourers. Half of all employees
were children between the ages of 6 and 12 years, each of whom could be required
to work a 12 h day (Emsley 2000). Such large-scale employment of women and
children kept British matchmaking firms financially viable within a competitive
market. The match factories were usually poorly ventilated, and the workers would
have been exposed to high levels of phosphorus fumes. A Public Health Report in
1863 was the first in England to publicly link phosphorous necrosis of the jaw to
exposure to match production fumes, but white phosphorus was only banned from
matchmaking in England’s factories from 1910 (Myers and McGlothin 1996).
Phossy jaw was a very painful and, if untreated, fatal condition, leading to sup-
puration of the affected bone and potentially septicaemia, meningitis and death.
Sufferers experienced severe facial disfigurement, with inflammation of the affected
side of the face, and an odourous discharge. A contemporary account of one suf-
ferer, George Bailey, aged 27, states that he was:
‘…attacked with severe pains in the upper jaw of a rheumatic character, together with much
swelling of the parts of the jaw and of the nose. Soon suppuration took place, and the bone
began to be denuded. Six months ago, he lost, by operation, a large portion of the left malar
bone; a scar and a suppurating sinus have remained there since, and the neighbouring eyelid
has become everted. On examining the mouth, a large portion of the upper jaw is found to
be necrosed, exposed, and loose. The hard palate itself seems sound and firm, as also do the
last one or two molars on both sides, and their alveolar processes. But all the other teeth, at
least all that still remain, are loose; and the alveolar portion of the jaw is almost entirely
bare, presenting here and there only small still-attached processes of gum. The lip nearly all
round has separated from the necrosed bone; and there is also a deep groove exposing bare
bone, between the alveoli and the margin of the palate. There is a moderate quantity of
purulent discharge, and the breath is very foetid’. (Bristowe 1862, 199)
152 R. Gowland
A number of the descriptions of phosphorus necrosis victims published in the

British Medical Journal during the 1890s also refer to the stigmatising effect of the
smell. In one instance, the foul odour produced by the suppurating lesions of a
female sufferer was such that her family found it difficult to attend to her (Satre
1982, 16). Smell is worthwhile considering in palaeopathological analyses as we
have a tendency to discuss only the visual aspects of pathologies in terms of stigma-
tisation, without considering the negative impact of noxious odours. Treatment of
phossy jaw consisted of the surgical removal of the infected piece of jaw, and,
although disfiguring and debilitating, this proved successful in a number of patients
(Nilsson 1995).
In addition to the fetid smell and extensive facial damage, the mouth, hair, skin
and clothes of the matchmakers became ingrained with phosphorus and would give
off a greenish white phosphorescent glow. Grandchildren of nineteenth-century
match-workers in London recalled pools of phosphorescent vomit between the fac-
tory and the workers’ houses (Raw 2009, 92). The matchmaking industry, more than
any other, created an alien physiology; the workers’ bodies – already stunted and
deformed through poor nutrition (as in the case of Skeleton 69) – were made
‘strange’.
The skeletal remains of burial 69 show all of the hallmarks of being undernour-
ished and stunted, and if indeed he/she was a match-worker, they would have spent
much of their short life working long hours in the factory, returning home to an
overcrowded and unsanitary home. Diet would have been monotonous and low in
meat protein, fruit or vegetables and would have primarily consisted of cheap car-
bohydrates such as bread, porridge and potatoes (Humphries 2010). These health
problems would have been exacerbated by an initial throbbing toothache, which
would gradually have worsened, inflaming the whole left side of the face, until it
erupted with an open lesion and accompanying foul odour. His/her occupational
disease became imprinted on an already compromised physiology – a factor which
likely increased susceptibility to and progression of the condition and resulted in
this vulnerable child’s early demise. This child was, however, a Quaker and part of
a wider community. One hopes, therefore, that they would have been cared for in
this pitiful state, although it is possible that the smell of decay meant that they spent
much of their remaining days and hours in a solitary state.
Case Study 2: Pauper Apprentices – North Yorkshire
Fewston is a small village located in the Washburn Valley, near Harrogate in North
Yorkshire (Fig. 8.1). In 2009 a skeletal assemblage was excavated from the parish
churchyard in advance of building work. Coffin plates and headstones indicated
that the better-surviving burials in this location were predominantly of nineteenth-
century date. During the analysis of the skeletal remains, an unusual predomi-
nance of adolescent children amongst the non-adults was noted (Gowland et al.
2017). This was unexpected as this age group tends to be one of the least
well-represented at cemetery sites when compared to younger children due to

decreasing mortality risks in later childhood (Chamberlain 2006). Many of these
adolescents exhibited a range of skeletal pathologies, including rickets, plane-
form dental enamel hypoplasia, scurvy, stunted growth, indicators of respiratory
disease in the form of rib lesions and maxillary sinusitis and one case of tuberculosis
(Gowland et al. 2017).
Twenty-one of the excavated skeletons were identified on the basis of coffin
plates and/or grave monuments, including one ten-month old infant. Analysis of the
birth and death certificates of the identified individuals, together with census
records, indicated that the majority had lived and died in the Washburn valley. These
‘locals’ exhibited limited evidence for the types of severe pathological lesions
expressed by the adolescents (Gowland et al. 2017). None of the adolescents, how-
ever, had associated coffin plates, and their identities are unknown.
During the nineteenth century, rapid urbanisation was fuelled by population
mobility from rural to urban areas, and between 1801 and 1901, the proportion of
people living in towns increased from one-fifth to four-fifths (Wohl 1983). What has
received less attention, however, was the reverse migration from urban to rural
areas, in the form of pauper apprentices. These apprentices were workhouse chil-
dren from cities such as Leeds, London and Liverpool, who, from as young 7 years
of age, were indentured to work in rural textile mills, often located far from their
place of origin (Honeyman 2007).
The pauper apprentices were fed, housed and given some education and in return
would work up to 14 h a day as farm labourers or factory workers. These children
would enter into this arrangement by signing (or marking) an indenture, which was
a contractual agreement binding them to their place of work until the age of 21 years.
While some children signed up willingly, in some instances neither the children nor
their parents (if alive) had much free will in this arrangement, particularly at parish
workhouses with large numbers of children to care for (Honeyman 2007). The well-
known biography of one such pauper apprentice, Robert Blincoe, describes how he
was duped into signing an indenture by promises of ‘roast beef and plum pudding…
and plenty of cash’. Blincoe’s account is an early example of the ‘misery biography’
genre (real-life accounts of neglect and abuse). He was indentured from the St
Pancras workhouse in London, to work in mills in Nottingham and Derbyshire in
the North of England from the age of 7 until 21 years (Brown 2012). At both mills
conditions were grim; the children worked long hours, were fed little other than
porridge and black bread, were beaten and cruelly punished and suffered horrific
injuries working in such close proximity to heavy machinery. Blincoe himself lost
several fingers in accidents and engaged in a number of thwarted attempts to run
away from the mills. Blincoe, though described as stunted and bow-legged, sur-
vived his experiences and as an adult was interviewed by a committee examining
the working conditions of children. He recounted his story to a journalist, John
Brown, in 1822, and it has been published in a variety of formats since.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the village of Fewston was associated
with a flax mill known as West House Mill. One of the apprentice houses (segregated
by sex) in which the paupers would have slept still exists today. Considerable numbers
154 R. Gowland
Fig. 8.2 Visceral surface of a non-adult rib with woven new bone formation
of children, the majority of whom were girls, were brought to work at West House
Mill from the London workhouses of Lambeth and Shoreditch as well as elsewhere
in the country (Honeyman 2007). An account of labour specifically within the
Fewston mill was written by Robert Collyer, whose parents had both been pauper
apprentices from Norwich, and who worked in the mill himself from the ages of 8
until 14 years, 13 h per day from Mondays to Fridays and 11 h on Saturdays. Collyer
(1908, 15–16) described the conditions: ‘…rung in at 6 in the morning and out at
8 in the evening with an hour for dinner and a rest. And if we got a chance to sit
down for a few moments when the overlooker wasn’t around to lay his leathern
strap on our small shoulders….and the result of this was that weaker children were
so crippled that the memory of their crooked limbs still casts a rather sinister light
for me on the scriptures’. He goes on to describe his constant tiredness and dread of
being woken by the bell ringing him to work. Collyer went on to emigrate to
America where he became a well-known Methodist preacher.
Burial records from Fewston church show a peak in adolescent deaths during the
mill’s most productive years, some of whom had the address of ‘West House’, indi-
cating the mill. This evidence when analysed together with the bioarchaeological
data is compelling in terms of the identities of these children as pauper apprentices.
A high level of sinusitis and rib lesions were also observed in the children (Fig. 8.2),
and these could well be associated with mill work in which lung complaints such as
byssinosis, also known as ‘cotton-workers lung’, were a frequent and known occu-
pational hazard. In 1861 it was reported that about three quarters of the flax workers
in England had severe bronchial disorders (Wohl 1983, 273).
Fig. 8.3 Deciduous and permanent upper molars from a Fewston individual with gross cuspal
enamel hypoplasia
These children’s skeletons at Fewston were marked out as different from the rest
of the skeletal assemblage: they were dramatically stunted (with one 15-year-old the
equivalent height of a 9-year-old) and exhibited a range of pathological conditions.
The evidence for rickets, scurvy and gross cuspal enamel hypoplasia present in these
adolescents is more consistent with the urban poor, particularly those from London
(e.g. Ogden et al. 2007; Pinhasi et al. 2006), rather than rural Yorkshire. The decidu-
ous as well as the permanent teeth of some of these children also showed signs of
gross cuspal enamel defects (Fig. 8.3). The lesions on the anterior deciduous teeth
would have been initiated in utero and thus indicate the poor health status of the
mothers who bore them. Early life growth deficits can be difficult to compensate in
later life even in optimal conditions (Aizer and Currie 2014).
Stable isotope evidence for strontium shows that many of these adolescents have
a ‘nonlocal’ signature when compared to the identified individuals known to have
been born and raised in the valley (Gowland et al. 2017). This lends further support
to the identification of these individuals as pauper apprentices.
These children, born into poverty by mothers who were poorly nourished them-
selves, were already at a disadvantage, biologically as well as socially. These work-
house children may have been orphaned early on in life, and in such cases, it is also
likely that nutrition in infancy was suboptimal. This poor start would have been
further compounded by a subsequent life of toil in the mill, with polluted air, noisy
and dangerous machinery and lack of proper rest and good diet. Such children, so
far away from home, had little oversight from their distant parishes and no family in
close proximity to decry their general working conditions or care if any harm befell
them; they were vulnerable, expendable and forgotten.
156 R. Gowland
Discussion: Industrialised Bodies
The industrial revolution brought economic benefits to the nation but also resulted
in unimaginable hardships for those toiling in factories and in mines. The nineteenth-
century public health reformer Edwin Chadwick expressed concerns that factory
labour was resulting in the physiological deterioration of the nation. Chadwick’s
sanitary report of 1842 describes the rampant spread of endemic and epidemic dis-
ease amongst the poor as a consequence of their filthy living conditions, poor food,
hygiene and sanitation. His observations, however, carried a moral charge because
(in common with his contemporaries) he believed that such conditions were propa-
gated by the filthy habits of the poor – the Irish poor being particularly maligned.
The slum areas of cities were considered to be breeding grounds for immorality,
which was thought to spread like a contagion. Hard work was preached as a way of
counteracting such decline and dissolution. Chadwick’s account does not consider
why the poor were living in such terrible conditions and why they might be eating a
poor diet or indulging in alcohol; he judges them to be reckless, degenerate, lazy
and ‘other’. To become a pauper in nineteenth-century England was a moral failing
as well as an economic one (Symonds 2011).
Frederick Engels (1844) in his Condition of the Working Classes in England
described a range of bodily deformities in working children in Manchester, includ-
ing spinal curvature, scrofula, rickets, stunted growth, pale skin, thin hair and dull
eyes (Engels 1950). Though Engel’s work is a political polemic, many doctors of
this period also testified that factory children were small, pale and their ‘fibre less
vigorous’ when compared to their rural counterparts. Lord Shaftesbury, who
attempted to reform working hours, famously described children leaving the factory
gates during the earlier part of the nineteenth century as ‘a set of sad, dejected,
cadaverous creatures… the sight was most piteous, the deformities incredible. They
seemed to me, such were their crooked shapes, like a mass of crooked alphabets’.
The surgeon Francis Sharp (cited in Engels 1950) reported that without the
steady stream of rural to urban migrants, the ‘race of mill hands’ would soon be
‘wholly degenerate’. The use of the word ‘race’ and ‘degenerate’ are telling here; as
discussed, the poor were generally regarded as an inferior species of human.
Descriptions of the compromised physiologies of the poor not only reinforced their
‘otherness’ – their ‘degeneracy’– but also served as the explanation for their inferior
status. These people were not cognitively or physically ‘worthy’; they had no hope
of aspiring to the superior aesthetic of the wealthy. The naturalisation of the poor’s
position in society and the social construction of poverty during this period also
chimes with contemporaneous dialogues concerning race. A person’s social inferi-
ority and moral character were written on his or her body; it was believed to be
underpinned by biology, rather than the institutional structures which sought to sub-
jugate the working poor. Cesare Lombroso famously made similar links between
physical features and a propensity for criminality (e.g. Lombroso and Ferrero 1895).
Broader associations between poverty, fecklessness and immorality were common-
place. Indeed, nineteenth-century novelists often utilised descriptions of physical
deformities as a literary devise to emphasise a character’s ‘lower’ position in society

and intrinsic lack of morality (Gowland and Newman 2017). For example, in ‘Oliver
Twist’, Dickens described the Artful Dodger as ‘a snub-nosed, flat-browed,
common-faced boy, short for his age: with bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes’.
While Oliver himself is ‘pale and weak’ from his workhouse upbringing, he has a
‘good sturdy sprit’, which hints at his superior ancestry (Newman and Gowland
2016).
Power relationships between the rich and the poor are reproduced through
embodied interactions – the agency of one constraining the other. Social class was
performed through the body in the form was gruelling labour and the multitude of
other indignities suffered through impoverishment. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is
relevant here – referring to both conscious and unconscious bodily dispositions
which serve to construct and reinforce distinctions of social class. A number of
authors have explicitly explored the relevance of habitus for working class embodi-
ment (e.g. Charlesworth 1999; Farmer 2004; Wainwright and Turner 2003). For
example, in Charlesworth’s (1999, 65) exploration of working class embodied expe-
riences in a modern-day, deprived, post-industrial area of Yorkshire, England, he
states: ‘…class is a phenomenon of the flesh, of coming to inhabit the world in a
certain way through powerfully internalizing senses based in an objective hierarchy
of relations within which individual sensibilities take shape’.
The lower working classes in the nineteenth century would have been materially
demarcated by dress and housing, spatially differentiated in terms of where they
lived and worked and with regard to learned bodily dispositions such as comport-
ment, speech, gait and gesture (Wainwright and Turner 2003). But, much deeper
than this, the status of these individuals as ‘working class’ was inscribed, enmeshed
and ingrained in their flesh and bones via grinding labour, inadequate diet and
insanitary conditions. Wohl (1983, 264–265) discusses nineteenth-century occupa-
tional diseases and the impact on outward appearance, such as copper workers
having a greenish tint to their hair, those working with mercury having trembles,
potters having asthma and so forth. He states that ‘Industrial diseases thus further
accentuated the different physique and appearance of the working classes’ (Wohl
1983, 265).
The working classes in Victorian England were particularly reliant on their phys-
ical capital: manual labour, and indeed the abuse of their bodies through arduous
and dangerous occupation, was their only recourse for survival. The poor and the
powerful alike were not ignorant to the fact that such labour, particularly from child-
hood, was likely to either injure or, at best, ‘wear out’ the body relatively early on
in life. Any loss of physical capital and concomitant reduction of earning power
would result in destitution, but the societal constraints were such that individuals
had no choice but to engage.
The physicality of the lower working classes is much more differentiated than
Bourdieu conceptualised, because grinding marginalisation and associated anxiet-
ies alter the body at a more fundamental biological and even biomolecular level
(Kuzawa and Bragg 2012; Gowland 2015; Gowland and Newman 2017). Recent
research has demonstrated the intergenerational consequences of poverty, and this
158 R. Gowland
is important to consider in relation to the bioarchaeological evidence. During an

individual’s lifetime, gruelling working and living conditions and poor diet impact
directly upon physiology, affecting immune response, growth and metabolic pro-
cesses. However, such hostile environments may also result in epigenetic alterations
(changes to gene expression), which can be transmitted to subsequent offspring and
grandchildren. Epigenetic changes have been conceptualised as a molecular mem-
ory of life experiences, which are transmitted to future generations (Thayer and
Kuzawa 2011). Studies of modern populations have demonstrated that those of
lower status are differentiated epigenetically from higher-status individuals (Borghol
et al. 2012). The implications of these epigenetic changes for overall health have yet
to be established, but clear inequities are apparent in terms of morbidity and mortal-
ity between status groups. Biological disadvantage, therefore, is not simply a func-
tion of proximate causes such as poor diet and housing but can effectively be
inherited via chronic undernutrition in mothers (Barker et al. 2002; Barker 2012).
Through this mechanism, poverty can become embodied and imprinted upon the
physiology of the poor from before birth and in eighteenth- to nineteenth-century
England these inequalities were exacerbated through deplorable living and working
conditions. The stunted bodies of the pauper apprentices from Fewston bear witness
to the ravages of ill health from even before birth and are a testament to the inter-
generational nature of health inequalities. Some of these skeletal and dental lesions
(growth stunting and dental defects) pointed to maternal health deficits, again hint-
ing at generational poverty and deprivation (Chung and Kuzawa 2014). Thus chil-
dren born into low-status families in nineteenth-century England may have carried
with them the biomolecular weight of generations of biological and social disadvan-
tage (Gowland and Newman 2017). For the pauper apprentices at Fewston, this poor
start in life would have been compounded by further physiological onslaught
through harsh physical labour during childhood, poor diet and exposure to infec-
tious disease. These children stood very little chance of a long life, let alone a fulfill-
ing one. It is no wonder that there is a peak in adolescent deaths in Fewston during
the height of the mill’s productivity. These children’s lives were always hanging by
a thread.
Working class bodies were constructed as ‘other’ and ‘inferior’ – an image rein-
forced by the acquisition of occupational diseases from exposure to toxic work envi-
ronments from an early age. The shocking appearance of phossy jaw, together with
the generally wretched appearance of the matchmakers, acted as a catalyst towards
social reform. The plight of these workers was highlighted by the Salvation Army
who pleaded with people to save these girls from the ‘matchmakers leprosy’ (Emsley
2000). Their cause was taken up by Annie Besant, a middle-class agitator for social
reform. She drew upon the physical appearance of these woman and children to gain
public sympathy and support for the now famous match girls strike which took
place in East London in 1888. In an article in The Link, she stated: ‘Born in slums,
driven to work as children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because help-
less, flung aside as soon as worked out’ (Besant 1888). The strike was remarkable
for many reasons: it was one of the first organised strikes for unskilled labourers,
but it was also dominated by females (Malone 1999). Descriptions of the strike
also focussed on the physical appearance of the workers: The Justice reported
‘the contrast between these poor ‘white slaves’ and their opulent sisters’ as they
walked along the Embankment was ‘a very imposing sight’. The compromised
appearance of these employees became a tool for accelerating reform: it gave them
a means of achieving public sympathy and the power to exercise their collective
agency in order to subvert the social order. For just 1 day in 1888, these women and
girls were powerful.
Similarly reforms to working hours in factories also focussed on the physiologi-
cal effects of such labour on children, and, as with the match girls strike, the primary
instigators of change were not the workers themselves but middle- and upper-class
observers who were appalled at the appearance of the children. Charlesworth’s
(1999) study of modern-day Rotherham once more proves insightful in this regard.
He notes two points that are pertinent to Victorian England, again with reference to
Bourdieu. Firstly, working class people were utterly ground down by their constant
work and poor health, whereas the instigation of social change requires both energy
and resources. Of those in Rotherham, he states: ‘It is as though their absorption in
coping, in the immediacy of the strategies of surviving, means their awareness is
maintained in the available, in the ready-to-hand, such that the contemplative condi-
tion is foreclosed upon’ (Charlesworth 1999, 135). Secondly, the working classes
believed themselves to hold value only in terms of their physical labour; they were
not considered ‘socially instituted to hold opinions’ (Charlesworth 1999, 135).
They did not think themselves capable of articulating or expressing their pain and
hardships, nor to offer ways of alleviating these, in an acceptable or comprehensible
manner to those in charge. They did not speak the language of power. Interestingly,
this meant that their bodies, ‘crooked and stinted’ as they were, spoke for them: it
was their broken appearance that articulated their struggles. By contrast, middle-
and upper-class observers and sympathisers had access to the habitus of the more
powerful, and by moving between worlds, they were able to harness and translate
these biological ravages into social reform.
Conclusion
The story of these children is ultimately one of power and violence: the abuse and
degradation of the weak and vulnerable. The case studies above illustrate the ways
in which social status becomes enmeshed within the biological fabric of individu-
als’ bodies even prior to birth. In a period of low social mobility, the transgenera-
tional effects of poverty can contribute to increased morbidity and low life
expectancy. This was a period of high infant mortality, and for those who survived
this precarious time, their small bodies were soon engulfed and devoured by the
Victorian industrial machine. Paradoxically, childhood during this period was con-
sidered to be a state of innocence and of ‘nature’ – children had yet to be corrupted
by society’s ills (Rousseau 1889). Children of the poor were not, therefore, subject
to the same moral charges as their parents (i.e. impoverished due to their feckless
160 R. Gowland
and lustful ways); instead they had the luxury of blamelessness. As a consequence,
the damaged bodies of young children, which were readily in evidence to any who
visited factories, then became a more powerful symbol of the injustices of gruelling
hours of child labour. Their degraded bodies bore testament to the travesty of their
working and living conditions and became the catalyst for social change.
So what of childhood in post-industrial Britain? The UK currently has the high-
est level of child poverty in Western Europe: a quarter of all children are living in
poverty, and a third of these are classed as being in ‘severe poverty’. ‘In work’
poverty – where one or more family members are working – is also on the rise
(Shale et al. 2015). A child born into poverty is 10% more likely to die in infancy,
more than twice as likely to suffer from a chronic illness and has half the chance of
obtaining the average level of educational attainment of their wealthier peers (www.
barnados.org.uk). Current medical and social science research points time and again
to the social importance – and indeed economic prudence – of early life investment
and interventions for life-long well-being (Barker 2012; Wickham et al. 2016). Yet,
children today continue to be trapped by biological and social disadvantage.
It is worth citing Charlesworth’s (1999, 277) evocative description of contempo-
rary working class families at length: ‘For many working class kids, the baby’s magi-
cal power over others is soon lost, as class’s inscriptions overlay the flesh too young,
and a series of early beginning, ever-recurring, never-ending negative injunctions
ensure that their most personal sense of being is constituted amidst a fundamental
sense of inadequacy; which renders the generative capacities of the body-subject
inhibited in the processes of incorporation of the very techniques of comportment and
performative competence that frame the life of the successful adult’.
Children have been hardest hit by the current UK government policy of eco-
nomic austerity: the Child Poverty Act, with its target of eliminating child poverty
by 2020, has now been scrapped (Wickham et al. 2016). After more than half a
century of concerted reform in the UK, there is a sense of repeal; the burgeoning gap
between rich and poor, the current fragility of the national health care system and the
media-driven denigration and ‘othering’ of the working classes and their children
mean that the direction of travel has a distinctly Victorian feel.
Acknowledgements Thank you to Pamela Stone for inviting me to contribute to this volume and
to Tim Thompson for commenting on an earlier draft. I am grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund
and the British Academy (SG132083) for funding this research. Thanks also to Sally and Clive
Robinson and the team of volunteers at the Washburn Heritage Centre, Fewston.
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Chapter 9
From Womb to Tomb? Disrupting
the Narrative of the Reproductive
Female Body
Pamela K. Stone
Contents
Introduction 165
Anthropology, Medicine, and Framing Difference 167
From Womb to Tomb? 169
Bioarchaeological Investigations 174
Gender Inequality, Not Reproduction 180
Conclusions 183
References Cited 184
Introduction
Childbirth is “…an intimate and complex transaction whose topic is physiological and
whose language is cultural.” (Jordan 1993, 3)
Anthropologists are scientific storytellers who must acknowledge the power in

the stories we tell and identify evidence that supports or refutes our narratives,
rethinking them when necessary. Nowhere is this more evident than in how differ-
ence is negotiated through the body in our interpretations of males and females in
the past. Geller’s (2005) statement that “the fallibility of universalizing these binary
oppositions… [as today] sex and gender are argued to be both socioculturally con-
structed and historically contingent” (599) reminds us that we must interrogate
foundational assumptions woven into interpretations of sex and gender. For exam-
ple, the theory that males hunt (active) and females gather (passive) was used to
support the conflation of sex and gender as well as binary Western constructions of
male/female. This framework has been layered onto bioarchaeological interpreta-
tions, enforcing the idea that people in the past ascribed to the same social construc-
tions and nuclear family structures as those doing the interpretations. Reinforcing
these ideas are the biomedical and anthropological discourses that have marked the
P.K. Stone (*)


166 P.K. Stone
female body as burdened by reproduction: sick, in need of help, fragile, and

vulnerable.
This chapter explores how the narration of the female body in the last two and a
half centuries has been used to interpret the past and to reinforce assumptions that
the death of a reproductive-aged female was the failure of her womb. As bioarchae-
ologists, we need to consider how these ideas influenced skeletal analysis and
caused us to neglect other interpretations of females lived experience. The patho-
logical birth narrative has disabled female agency in anything beyond reproduction.
But when we reconsider data on pelvic architecture, in which clinically significant
pelvic metric data reveal the relative homogeneity of the bipedal female pelvis over
the last 20,000 years, it becomes evident that we need to rethink the idea that obstet-
rical risks are tied to biological constraints. Direct skeletal data suggest a larger
constellation of health disparities that have impacted females throughout time and
across cultures. These expanded interpretations allow us to situate trauma, violence,
disease, and mortality and morbidity within broader social and political contexts.
New narrations can disrupt conventional readings of the normalized docile female
body and allow us to view the birthing female as an individual engaging in a normal
biological process within complex social systems.
As a bioarchaeologist, I utilize multiple lines of inquiry to challenge interpreta-
tions of females’ roles in the past. I am particularly interested in how biology and
culture have been woven together so that “…the body can and should be read as a
text onto which societal norms and systems…” (Johnson and Repta 2012, 33) are
inscribed in life and in death. When we unpack how Western patriarchal social iden-
tities were codified as biological fact, we can reflect on how our own ideological
norms may have worked in translating the past; this reflection can allow for more
nuanced interpretations.
In this chapter, I consider how bioarchaeologists can examine the ways in which
reproductive risk is viewed through the lens of the culture of medicine. I also reflect
on the problem of reading the skeletal transcript against a backdrop of cultural
assumptions tied to historical readings of the reproductive body. Anthropology and
medicine have developed an understanding of difference that frames the reproduc-
tive female body as fragile and in need of help. I examine how anthropology, medi-
cine, and evolutionary theory made major assumptions about the cephalopelvic
relationship and the bipedal pelvis and created a childbirth risk narrative in the
absence of direct supportive data. I offer empirical skeletal data on critical obstetri-
cal dimensions spanning 20,000 years; these data reveal a lack of structural changes
to female pelvic architecture. These data, juxtaposed with cultural behaviors, ques-
tion contentions of obstetric risk as purely a product of evolution. We must consider
whether dominant cultural narratives have shaped the story of risky birth and
affected how we have read females in the past and continue to read them today. It is
imperative that we consider a wide range of data, not just a singular set of con-
structed constraints.
My research on Ancestral Pueblo females includes obstetric data that challenge
static assessments of obstetrical death for females while revealing a picture of
female resilience and hard work. When we consider culturally specific skeletal
9 From Womb to Tomb? Disrupting the Narrative of the Reproductive Female Body 167
p atterns of stress for reproductive-aged females as well as other factors outside of

reproduction, including social and political contexts, more nuanced pictures of lived
experiences are revealed. For Ancestral Puebloan females, daily life (occupational
stress) and maternal stressors can be framed within ethnographic and archaeological
contexts. When juxtaposed with recent research into maternal morbidity and mor-
tality, these data reveal that pregnancy and birth are part of a cascading effect of
stressors that may be a direct reflection of the political and social contexts in which
females live. Interpretations such as these reframe the role of parturition and allow
new ways of understanding females’ roles in community, their marginalization, the
effects of division of labor, and other realities that result in a lifetime of embodied
trauma and illness. This new thinking suggests that poor maternal health is the lit-
mus test for the larger issues females are facing globally.
Anthropology, Medicine, and Framing Difference
As Ruth Benedict said, “[t]he purpose of Anthropology is to make the world safe for
human differences.” Built on understanding human biological and cultural variation
and development across time and around the globe, the foundations of these efforts
developed around the science and medical inquiries forged in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century. Science, which relied on biologically deterministic framings of
difference, was rooted in white, patriarchal European perceptions that developed
into typological analyses and eugenics. Center stage was the desire to understand
physical (biological) differences between groups, between the sexes, and across
cultural boundaries, enabling hegemonic colonial control of nonwhite, non-
European, and non-male people. Maintaining the concept of biology as fixed and
finite, the discourse of difference became central to the development of inequality.
In the last three centuries, the image of the weak and unstable female body has
been reinforced through the discourses of anthropology, medicine, and science. This
construction is deeply rooted in biomedicine’s commodification of the reproductive
body. As Martin (2001) reminds us, the medical metaphor of the uterus is a machine,
in which the doctor (usually male) supervises the laborer (female) whose product is
the neonate. If the system fails, which according to medicine it is likely to do
because of its unpredictability, the doctor can utilize the technology of the medical
theater to fix the problem. This doctor–uterine–parturient triad reveals the hege-
monic, patriarchal framework that has driven medical and evolutionary discourses
and defined the appropriate performance of the female reproductive body.
Prior to the eighteenth century, physical sex differences were seen as differences
in degree; anatomy was not stressed (Harvey 2002); “the vagina [was] imagined as
an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as a scrotum, and the ovaries as
testicles” (Laquer 1990, 4). While still arguably tied to a male/female dichotomy,
sex and sexuality were not seen as purely cis-gender heteronormative. In contrast,
nineteenth-century Victorian scientists, against a backdrop of moral codes, devel-
oped the two-sex model of understanding in which anatomical differences were
168 P.K. Stone
stressed (Harvey 2002); modern sex theory was born. Biological differences were
seen as locked in, stemming from the “nerves, flesh, and bone” (Harvey 2002, 901).
Biological determinism became the discourse of science, and science became the
center of knowledge. Bodies were assessed by science in an effort to maintain the
social order in a new era of industry, changing moral codes and control of popula-
tions (Foucault 1990).
Over the last two centuries, anthropology and medicine have continued to nar-
rowly define the differences between males and females, and between one group
and another, structuring and policing “normal” versus “deviant.” For the European-
born scientist of the nineteenth century, the globe was a laboratory to study and
order difference. As Gilman (1985) argues, not only were geographies colonized but
so were bodies: “The power of medicine, at least in the nineteenth century, lies in
the rise in status of science” (205). As science adhered to a polygenism1 model of
human difference, the display of the sexualized black female was a way to distin-
guish the primitive from the civilized (white) female. The exhibition and subsequent
autopsy of Saartjie Baartman2, a young female taken from Cape Colony in South
Africa in the early nineteenth century, reflect the extreme ways that both racial and
sex differences, in the name of scientific inquiry, were used to disconnect females
bodies and make them deviant. As Gilman states,
…the black occupied the antithetical position to the white on the scale of humanity. This
polygenetic view was applied to all aspects of mankind, including sexuality and beauty. The
antithesis of European sexual mores and beauty is embodied in the black, and the essential
black, the lowest rung on the great chain of being, is the Hottentot. The physical appearance
of the Hottentot is, indeed, the central nineteenth-century icon for sexual difference between
the European and the black... (1985, 212)
After her untimely death, Saartjie Baartman’s body was dissected with “two
intentions: to compare a female of the ‘lowest’ human species with the highest ape
(the orangutan) and describe the anomalies of the Hottentot’s ‘organ of generation’”
(Gilman 1985, 213). This “…articulation of the visual forms of corporeal racial/
sexual difference … was fetishized and constructed in colonial discourses” (Netto
2005, 151–152); science used black bodies to cement assumptions of “biological”
difference as deviance. As the case of Saartjie Baartman exemplifies, the Victorian
picture of human difference was imbued with hegemonic patriarchy fueled by the
bible, imperialism, economics, and a desire to elevate white humans as superior and
apart from everyone else; the result was that certain bodies become valued over
others.
Constructed ideas of race and sex garnered further support through evolutionary
studies. Early anatomists embraced evolutionary explanations, proposing “…that
differences between male and female bodies were so vast that women’s develop-
ment had been arrested at a lower stage of evolution” (Schiebinger 1986, 63). The
1
Polygenism was an early evolutionary theory that different races evolved from different
ancestors.
2
Saartjie Baartman, also called Sarah Bartmann or Saat-Jee and known as the “Hottentot Venus”
(Gilman 1985, 213)
idea of the arrested female was also supported by their generally smaller stature,
crania, ribs and feet, their gracile mandibles, and the fact that females generally
stopped growing by age 14 (Schiebinger 1986). This was then translated into
attempts to understand female behavior. The scientific logic was that since females
were physically more childlike, their behaviors and intellects were childlike as well
(Schiebinger 1986). This was the scientific proof needed to support the idea that
“natural inequalities” existed (Schiebinger 1993) and that “…white women ranked
below European men in scales of both ontogeny and phylogeny” (Schiebinger 1986,
63). Medical understanding now had biological support to prove that female bodies
were unequal to those of their male counterparts (Harvey 2002). Females were cast
as passive participants in contrast to their active male counterparts: it was biologi-
cally determined.
Science, especially biological determinism, infused ideas of sex differences into
the social and political discourse of the passive female and the active male. Biology
was seen as absolute and inescapable, and the narrative of weakness versus strength
and of passivity versus activity was scripted. Science then developed its medical
story, in which differences were “…designed by nature as a necessary basis to
ensure the social order between men, women, and the family” (Pockles as cited by
Schiebinger 1986, 69). According to this narrative, a distinguishing characteristic
that set females apart from males was their ability to gestate and bear children. In
biological terms, biology shaped sex, so the focus shifted to the pelvis.
From Womb to Tomb?
Evolution and Birth
As an evolutionary tale, childbirth follows the patterns of sex and gender in which
binary thinking conflates biology and culture, creating the idea of a narrowly defined
process. The assumption that the smaller bipedal pelvis is at odds with birthing
larger-brained infants, in contrast to nonhuman quadruped pelves and their smaller-
brained infants, supports the idea that human evolution weakened the reproductive
female. This reading of evolution reveals how deeply ingrained and historically con-
tingent the childbirth narrative has been. Consider that in 1981, Lovejoy hypothe-
sized that male behavior necessitated a bipedal gait. He theorized that bipedal
locomotion enabled males to more efficiently feed and protect their weak and
encumbered females (mothers) and infants. The virile male becomes the catalyst for
evolutionary change. This harkens to fairy tales where the knight on a steed saves
the damsel in distress; male behavior rescues the female. However, in the tale of
human evolution, she is rescued by males but is fated to being disabled and without
agency: to reproduce and become the mother and caregiver. But what if we turned
this story around?
170 P.K. Stone
Bioarchaeologists (and others) are rewriting this story, unpacking the complex
systems of behavior and biology that resulted in hominin adaptation to bipedal
walking, encephalization, and altricial neonates (Dunsworth et al. 2012; Stone
2016; Wittman and Lewis 2007). In the case of bipedalism, it has been clearly
shown that the pressures for upright walking were not sex-specific but species-wide
(Stone and Walrath 2006). Studies such as Dunsworth et al. (2012) have argued that
pelvic size is not the only factor that determines when birth begins. Dunsworth and
colleagues’ research has shown that when the caloric needs for neonatal brain
growth exceed the gestational environment, the birth process is triggered. Their
research suggests that the obstetrical dilemma is not a problem of cephalopelvic
structure but instead is an issue of the physiological needs of increased human brain
size. But the discourse on human childbirth remains deeply rooted in the idea of an
obstetrical dilemma that weakens the parturient.
Bioarchaeological analyses continue to reinforce this narrative by suggesting
that demographic profiles revealing higher rates of mortality for reproductive-aged
females in archaeological samples reflect the difficulties of childbirth. These demo-
graphic profiles are rarely interrogated to consider the larger constellations of lived
experiences that may have put reproductive-aged females at risk for early death.
Presented here are bioarchaeological data that reveal how more complex interpreta-
tions can offer nuanced understandings of communities in the past, but first, a brief
unpacking of the obstetrical dilemma.
The Obstetrical Dilemma
As noted by many researchers, the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis states that the
evolutionary change to smaller bipedal pelves and large-brained neonates makes
human childbirth always difficult (Franciscus 2009; Grabowski 2013; Krogman
1951; Lovejoy 1986; Trevathan 2011; Rosenberg 1992; Rosenberg and Trevathan
1995; Roy 2003; Schultz 1949; Tague and Lovejoy 1986; Wittman and Wall 2007;
Walsh 2008; Washburn 1960; Weiner et al. 2008). This evolutionary framework
supports the idea that birth and maternal mortality are tied directly to a structural
complication set by evolution. The result is a “scar of evolution” which makes the
parturient fragile, sick, and helpless. The biological processes linked to pregnancy
and birth (menstruation, conception, gestation, labor, and lactation) are seen as dis-
abling female bodies, forcing them into the medical theater because of their fragile
states. Defining female bodies as fragile neglects to consider other burdens that
females face, such as strenuous workloads, differential access to resources, and
chronic ill health.
Rethinking the narrative of the biologically inferior female body requires us to
consider how the Victorian era’s regulation of the female uterine economy during
the rapid development of medicine was deeply rooted in moral codes and political
economies. In this time, any female issues (physical, mental) were seen as stem-
ming from the uterus (Shuttleworth 1990). Victorian females were made “helpless
by the tyranny of [their] own body… [resorting] to external medication and supervi-
sion to regulate the flow of her secretions and hence her physical and mental health”
(Shuttleworth 1990, 51). Females needed help, and nowhere was this idea more
evident than in childbirth. But outside help comes with a cost, and access to medi-
cine required a new economy, one that reflected status: “Medicine becomes cosmo-
politan and access to technology is not only novel but also important to status”
(Stone 2009, 45). Accessing obstetric care in lying-in hospitals reflected economic
and social status for Victorian middle- and upper-class females. This shift from
hearth and home to lying-in hospitals brought about a dramatic increase in maternal
morbidity and mortality for white women (Ehrenreich and English 1973; Loudon
1992; Stone 2009). This reified childbearing as more problematic for white, afflu-
ent, “evolved” European women.
In contrast to white women, who were seemingly struggling to survive as they
gave birth in hospitals, anthropologists and medical doctors consistently noted that
nonwhite, non-Western females seemed to have little trouble giving birth (Englemann
1882; Riggs 1904; Vaughan 1931). Englemann, a botanist and physician, noted that
for nonwhites “labor may be characterized as short and easy, accompanied by few
accidents and followed by little or no prostration” (1882, 7). Continuing with the
same observations, in 1904 a physician at Johns Hopkins in his comparative study
on “white and Negro pelves” notes that “[t]he literature is packed with references to
remarkably easy labors among aboriginal peoples” (Riggs 1904, 421). These early
reflections of differences in labor facilitated the racializing of birth. As Riggs notes,
there is an “…increased difficulty of labor when native women are impregnated by
Europeans” (Riggs 1904, 421). Although he offers no direct data to support this
point, this perceived contrast between “civilized” white women and their nonwhite
reproductive peers advanced the ideas of polygenism and an evolutionary dilemma:
real biological consequences of race. However, these theorists and physicians
neglected to consider the role that medicine may have played in the increased mor-
bidity and mortality for the females who accessed care within the hospi. The racial-
ization of childbirth solidified the social-evolutionary narration of a structural
dilemma for the civilized reproductive female body, successfully recasting parturi-
tion as a pathological state for females. But how did pelvic structure become the
scapegoat for maternal complications and death?
Pelvic structure was the central focus of typological analyses. Racial classifica-
tions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Englemann 1882; Riggs
1904; Thoms et al. 1939; Turner 1885) helped to enforce polygenism and maintain
race as a tenet of human biological difference. In the mid-twentieth century, Schultz
(1949), Krogman (1951), and Washburn (1960) linked the evolutionary shift to
bipedalism and encephalization to the risky birth narrative that framed the need for
obstetric care, thus cementing this “scar of evolution” as the failed relationship of
the evolved, white woman’s bipedal pelvis to neonatal cranial size. Krogman, in
science magazine (1951, 56), suggested that “there can be no doubt that many of the
obstetrical problems of Mrs. H. Sapiens are due to the combination of a narrower
pelvis and a bigger head in the species.” Evolution marked the maternal body and
justified the medicalizing of the birth process (Walrath 2003). This twentieth-century
172 P.K. Stone
“fact” of life became embedded in biomedical obstetrics, anthropology, and the eyes
of the general public: women are held captive by their difficult and dangerous repro-
ductive situation.
These nineteenth- and twentieth-century researchers and ethnographers utilized
narrowly defined lines of evidence to support the need for hospital care and use of
technology in the birthing theater; all assumed that innovations in care supported
successful birth outcomes for mother and child. But this shift in birth care from the
midwife who traditionally delivered live babies to living mothers to the surgeon
who relied on technology and more often delivered dead children created sick and
dying mothers (Wilson 1995; Woods and Galley 2015). This reality is reflected in
the increase in maternal mortality during the late 1800s into the mid-1900s. These
deaths can be attributable to many of the “new technologies” that were being uti-
lized in the hospital setting, including the hospital itself. In the pre-antibiotic era,
the increase in childbed death, also known as puerperal sepsis, was caused by
unsanitary conditions (De Costa 2002; Loudon 1992, 2000). The use of the lithot-
omy position3 in medicalized childbirth also compromised the birth process and
pelvic aperture (Michel et al. 2002) resulting in complicated and often obstructed
labors.
Construction of the risky childbirth narrative relied on two centuries of medical
obstetrics and anthropological discourses in which the parturient womb and pelvis
have been pathologized. But the hominin skeletal body has been bipedal for at least
four million years, and homo sapiens have thrived over the last 120,000 years.
Doesn’t this negative view of females ignore centuries of reproductive resilience?
The historical contexts discussed here reveal how there is a larger constellation of
problems that actually put females at risk for high rates of morbidity and mortality.
Maternal Health
Today, over 800 females die each day in marginal agricultural settings as a result of
preventable pregnancy-related health problems that are likely exacerbated by work
demands, social and political stresses, and high rates of poverty (WHO 2016).
Worldwide studies on pregnancy-related deaths demonstrate that hemorrhage and
infections, high blood pressure during pregnancy (preeclampsia and eclampsia),
and unsafe abortions account for the highest percentage of deaths for females
(Kessebaum 2014). While it is generally assumed that females are restricted by their
reproductive positions in society, these “at-risk” females work long hours at subsis-
tence activities and child rearing. In addition, many of these females live in extreme
poverty and are likely unable to access needed resources. This strongly suggests that
females in marginal communities have both the burdens of pregnancy and its risks,
placing an enormous strain on their bodies (Kassebaum et al. 2014). Health data on
3
Patient is on her back, feet are raised (often in stirrups), hips and knees are flexed, and thighs are
apart.
the effects of gender inequality reveal that even though females live longer than
men, they experience more chronic illness and disability (United Nations 2015;
Harris and Ross 1987). Clearly, females’ multiple roles and lower status are con-
nected to their poorer health, and there is reason to believe that the effects of gender
asymmetries and increased health risks for females extend into the precontact past
as well.
Knowledge about females in ancient times is less forthcoming, but many archae-
ological studies report higher mortality rates for reproductive-aged females, sug-
gesting that something about pregnancy and birth may have put them at risk for
early death (e.g., Arriaza et al. 1988; Ashworth et al. 1976; Owsley and Bradtmiller
1983; Sibley et al. 1992). Females in antiquity were subject to the stresses of high
fecundity as well as hard work; the consequences were most likely devastating and
may have contributed to early mortality for some. In order to unpack the impact of
gendered work patterns on the mortality of precontact reproductive-aged females,
we must link biological data with archaeological and ethnographic data. This meth-
odology allows for an increased understanding of women’s reproductive health and
lets us unravel the myths that females are restricted or immobilized by pregnancy,
lactation, childbirth, and motherhood. Viewing females as active before, during, and
after pregnancy can recast them as both mothers and producers in society (past and
present).
With a focus on Ancestral Pueblo populations, my work has examined the quan-
tity (how long they lived) and quality (how hard they worked) of life for adult
females through bioarchaeological analyses that include multiple lines of inquiry:
archaeological, biological, and ethnographic. The Southwest offers a potentially
unique place to evaluate the long-term history of female health and females lives
through bioarchaeological investigations coupled with contemporary women and
men’s stories and family histories. Studies reveal that many of the health problems
facing people worldwide today are similar to the endemic difficulties for groups
living in the ancient Southwest. Documented precontact health problems in the
Southwest include chronic and ubiquitous iron-deficiency anemia (Walker 1985;
Martin et al. 1991), helminthic parasites such as pinworm and hookworm (Reinhard
1988, 1990), infections such as Staphylococcus and Streptococcus (Larsen 2015),
non-venereal syphilis (treponematosis) (Baker and Armelagos 1988; Harper et al.
2011), and tuberculosis (Gómez i Prat 2003). The archaeological occurrence of
these illnesses has been well documented but less work has been done in the area of
reproductive stress and occupational hazards.
By locating birth and the birthing females as engaging in a normal biological
process within culturally specific and complex social systems, we can begin to
understand what puts females at risk of early death while also activating their roles
in community beyond reproduction. This type of research requires systematic evalu-
ation of the ecological and biocultural factors that can increase female susceptibility
to morbidity and early mortality, particularly for reproductive-aged females who
bear the burden of pregnancy alongside other factors that shape health, occupation,
and lifestyle. By expanding our interpretations of females’ roles beyond reproduc-
tion, we can untangle the ways in which biology and culture have been woven
174 P.K. Stone
together and shift our focus away from the womb. These new models can interrogate
what puts females at risk for higher rates of morbidity and early mortality in the past
as well as in the present.
Bioarchaeological Investigations
What do we know about pregnancy and birth hazards in the past? The contention
that females in their peak reproductive years are more likely to die due to obstetrical
hazards has been a ubiquitously accepted notion for archaeological populations
(Angel 1978; Berryman 1984; Blakely 1977; Clarke 1977; Lallo et al. 1978; Lovejoy
et al. 1977; Owsley and Bradtmiller 1983; Owsley and Bass 1979; Rosenberg and
Trevathan 1995; Tague and Lovejoy 1986). These assumptions of childbirth-related
deaths for females rely only on the presence of sex-differential mortality, focusing
on common mortality peaks for females at 20–30 years of age. It is interesting to
note that these assumptions have not been fully tested with empirical research.
Although there have been a few studies in which the neonate has been found in situ
(Owsley and Bradtmiller 1983), or in the womb of the mother in the case of mum-
mified remains (Arrizia et al. 1988), there is little else to suggest that complications
in parturition resulted in the death of an individual. But research continues to sug-
gest that the death of a reproductive-aged females was the consequence of giving
birth. However, bioarchaeologists have the ability to assess reproductive complica-
tions through measurements of the bony pelvic transcript.
Skeletal Analysis: Measuring the Risk of Pregnancy?
Direct skeletal evidence of obstetric risk (compromised pelvic size and shape) is
thin, since measuring the pelvic girdle is not part of the suite of standard measure-
ments taken on human skeletal samples (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Only a few
studies have tested the idea of obstetrical risk with empirical data (Butte et al. 1981;
Fenwick and Simkin 1987; Sibley et al. 1992; Arrazia et al. 1988; Stone 2000,
2016). These studies have compared the measurements of critical obstetric dimen-
sions to contemporary standards to examine factors correlated with mortality in
adult women today. Obstetric complications, which are often thought to be the
result of dystocia (difficult labor, often conflated with obstructed labor), can be
examined and quantified through direct measurements of the size and shape of the
bony birth canal. Bioarchaeologists who employ bony pelvic measurements can
assess areas of clinical interest in the passage of the neonate through the birth canal.
These data can be used to quantify the “normal” pelvis in archaeological and ana-
tomical collections.
Clinically, there are three planes of interest in the birth process: inlet, midpelvis,
and outlet (Fig. 9.1) (Davis 2004; MacDonald et al.1997). It is understood that the
Fig. 9.1 Three major

obstetric pelvic planes
measured: Inlet, least
(midplane), outlet
Fig. 9.2 Clinical measurement of the obstetric conjugate and the corresponding skeletal measure-
ment of the pelvic inlet
compromising of any of these planes can result in dystocia and possible death of the
mother and neonate (Macdonald et al. 1997). For the bioarchaeologist, direct pelvic
measurements can be used to see if compromised pelvic dimensions are present and
these can be correlated to clinical obstetric measures (Figs. 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4) (Stone
2016; Sibley et al. 1992). When collected, the skeletal measurements reveal that
pelvic dimensions in the past are consistent with contemporary standards. Table 9.1
shows the pelvic metric data from seven sites and three collections, spanning
20,000BP (Later Stone Age sample) to the twentieth-century Hamann-Todd
Collection. These data reveal that pelvic dimensions fall within or very close to cur-
rent “normal” standards; there is little variability among these very diverse popula-
tions. This suggests that females in the ancient world were not at higher risk for
obstructed labors as a result of their pelvic shape or size.
176 P.K. Stone
Fig. 9.3 Skeletal and clinical obstetric measurements of the midpelvis
Fig. 9.4 Skeletal and clinical obstetric measurements of the pelvic outlet
While we do have tools to examine and measure pelvic shape and size against a
set of clinically derived standards, these standards do not take into account the flex-
ibility of the pelvis, the complexity of the birth process, and the social experience of
birth for an individual within her community. We have to be careful not to suggest
that pelvic size is the only indicator of complications resulting in maternal death.
We need to look beyond the lens of fecundity and maternal mortality and consider
Table 9.1 Metrics for obstetric pelvic dimensions (measurements in cm) from multiple archaeological sites, compared with United States obstetrical standards
U/S Ancestral Indian Pecos Later Stone H-Tg H-Tg British
Dimensions Normala Pueblo Knottb Puebloc Libbend Haidac Nubiane Agef CISCd H-Te whites blacks sampleh
Inlet A.P 10.5 X 10 3 10.8 9.1 9.8 11.2 10.3 10.1 11.0 11.3 11.1 11 0 11.8
SD 0.9 0.7 0.8d 0.8 1.0 0.8 1.1 1.0 1.2 1.1 1.2 10
N 43 28 42 11 15 36 18 40 40 47 48 375
Transverse 13.5 X 126 13.4 13.4 13.4 13.5 11.6 11.1 12.6 13.2 13.4 12.3 13.1
SD 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.7 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7
N 44 33 54 12 19 36 18 40 40 50 50 375
A-P 11.5 X 11.8 12.0 11.8 12.6 13.8 11.5 12.3 12.0 12.2 12.7 12.8 –
Midpelvis SD 1.1 1.0 0.9 0.7 1.0 0.7 1.3 0.8 0.9 0.8 1.0 –
N 38 4 6 – 8 36 19 40 40 50 50 –
Transverse 10.5 X 10.3 11.2 99 – 11.0 9.1 9.6 10.0 10.5 10.2 9.7 10.0
SD 0.8 1.0 1.0 – 0.5 0.7 1.1 0.9 0.95 0.4 0.8 0.7
N 10 4 6 – 8 36 10 21 32 3 21 375
A-P 11.5 X 11.4 11.4 11.4 12.1 13.5 11.1 12.2 11.4 11.5 11.9 12.3 11.9
SD 1.1 0.9 0.9 0.6 1.0 0.7 1.2 0.8 0.9 0.9 1.0 0.9
N 36 30 43 8 15 36 15 40 40 47 46 375
Outlet Transverse 10 X 10.5 12.7 11.6 12.7 12.4 9.7 9.9 11.3 11.8 12 11.3 10.9
SD 1.1 0.9 1.0 1.3 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.2 1.1 0.9 1.1 0.7
N 41 23 29 6 11 36 16 40 39 49 50 375
a
Obstetric standards from Williams Obstetrics (1997)
b
Data from Stone (2000)
c
Data from Tague (1989)
d
Kulubanart, Nubian – Data from Sibley et al. (1992)
9 From Womb to Tomb? Disrupting the Narrative of the Reproductive Female Body
e
Data from Kurki (2007)
f
Coimbra-identified skeletal collection (CISC), Data from Kurki, (2007)
g
European-Americans from the Hammon-Todd collection (H-T), data from Kurki (2007)
h
British sample from the Institute of Anatomy, University College Hospital. London – Data from Young and Ince (1940)
177
– Data not available

178 P.K. Stone
the larger contexts in which they lived to fully understand the untimely death of
young females in the past.
By examining occupational stress markers, new ways of thinking about the death
of reproductive-aged females emerge. This requires that skeletal analyses of
reproductive-aged females include a larger set of data points. This allows females to
be seen as active participants in their communities in their roles as mothers, labor-
ers, providers, and even protectors, and not just as pregnant and dead.
Occupational and Reproductive Stress
Empirical data on females’ and males’ day-to-day workload and patterns of activity
can help us think about the quality of females’ lives during their peak reproductive
years. Data on habitual work patterns demonstrate the value of placing bioarchaeo-
logical research on the skeleton within a framework that views the consequences of
work patterns on overall health and longevity. Skeletal analyses informed by a bio-
cultural perspective use biological markers to assess the collective and accumulated
forces of biomechanical changes in the skeleton related to activity-induced strains
and injuries. Methodologically, this relies on the one-to-one relationship between
constant muscle use and bone morphology at the sites of interaction between the
bone and muscle (Bridges 1990; Kate and Roberts 1965; Kennedy 1989; Lane
1887; Ubelaker 1979).
Skeletal markers of occupational stress are used in quantifying lesions associated
with muscular use. Kennedy in 1989 pioneered this area of study by collecting data
on skeletons to explain anatomical changes that are not disease related. In the last
two decades, bioarchaeological research has used these nonmetric markers to reveal
information about socioeconomic adaptations, disease responses to activity-induced
pathological conditions, divisions of labor, and habitual activities related to occupa-
tion and labor (Bridges 1990; Hawkey and Merbs 1995; Kennedy 1989; Kostick
1963; Lane 1887; Martin 1991; Molleson 1994; Villette et al. 2010; Wilczak 1998).
It has been documented ethnographically that Puebloan females ground corn,
built and mended houses, built fire pits and beehive ovens, farmed, tended livestock,
hunted (on occasion), gathered, carried water, and made pottery and baskets
(Babcock 1991; Dozier 1970; Lowell 1991; Martin et al. 1991; Underhill 1946).
The intensification of agriculture throughout the Southwest region placed an enor-
mous burden on females and caused them to divide their time between competing
the tasks of economic labor and rearing children (Harris and Ross 1987; Martin
et al. 1991). The stresses of daily life, coupled with the physiological stress of preg-
nancy, parturition, short between-birth intervals, lactation, and child care, placed
these females at risk for higher rates of morbidity and early death (Bentley et al.
1993; Butte et al. 1981; Harrell 1981). These same stressors have been shown to
affect maternal mortality statistics in contemporary populations (Kassebaum et al.
2014; WHO 2016). Bioarchaeological studies are poised to link these stressors and
to demonstrate that the relationship between reproduction and occupation on female

health is intricately linked and must be assessed to understand mortality in
reproductive-aged females in the past.
nderstanding Task Differentiation Through Ethnoarchaeology

U
and the Biological Consequences for Men and Women
in Ancestral Pueblo Villages
To understand the relationship between reproduction and occupation beyond skel-

etal markers, we must understand the cultural values and practices embedded in a
particular group’s ideology. For Pueblo populations, ethnography has documented
ceremonial practices, kinship, and traditional behaviors surrounding subsistence,
building, and craft production (Cordel 1984; Dutton 1983; Waters 1963). But this
information has been of limited value because of predominantly androcentric
research constructed through the lens of Western cultural ideals that place men and
women in rigidly defined roles. However, scholarship utilizing gender theory pro-
vides models to think about gender roles that include females and children as active
agents of social and cultural change (Classen 1992; Gero and Conkey 1991; Kamp
2001; Walde and Willows 1991).
Lowell’s (1991) work synthesizes early ethnographic research in the Southwest
and reflects on activities within historic Hopi and Zuni communities and how they
were divided along gender lines. Through her work, interpretations of space in the
archaeological record can be tied to culturally specific ways that Puebloan popula-
tions divided tasks. Lowell’s research (1991) linked females to food production,
which connected them to all spaces (e.g., hearths, crops in the fields) and artifactual
remains (e.g., grinding stones) related to subsistence. Lowell’s exhaustive analyses
demonstrate how long-term habitation and change in food production practices can
be linked to women through archaeological reconstruction.
Models such as these can be used in bioarchaeological research to expand our
understanding of how cultural activities are correlated to biological consequences.
For example, lesions of occupational stress are impossible to define without a con-
text for evaluation. Ethnographic data, along with firsthand accounts, can inform the
biological data. Modeling after Kennedy’s (1989) seminal work on occupational
stress markers, I have taken Lowell’s ethnographic data on Puebloan activities and
added the biological consequences of these activities for females (Table 9.2) and
males (Table 9.3) to her ethnographic model. While it is clear that not all activities
will result in lesions on the skeleton, we can begin to see how long- term habitual
activities, which challenge females physically day after day, may affect them. With
the addition of reproduction and the depletion associated with pregnancy, parturi-
tion, lactation, weaning, and child rearing, it is clear that Pueblo life was demanding
on females. These assessments reveal that the burdens women bear may put them at
risk for early death when coupled with pregnancy.
180 P.K. Stone
Maternal Mortality in the Past
Bioarchaeologists are positioned to contextualize patterns of maternal mortality by

combining biological data, archaeological evidence, and biocultural perspectives.
These multilayered inquiries can offer new insights regarding the deaths of
reproductive-aged females in the past. Even though many researchers claim that the
majority of deaths of young women are reproductively related, others (like me)
strongly support the idea that these deaths are likely not due solely to
reproduction.
Only a few studies have utilized physical remains to examine critical obstetric
dimensions; these studies lack any definitive evidence that compromised pelvic
dimensions (aka: slightly flattened canal) for females who died young were the
cause of prolonged and/or obstructed labor and death (Sibley et al. 1992; Stone
2016; Tague 1994; Tague and Lovejoy 1986). Even fewer studies contend that
reproduction is not the cause of early mortality for females in the past (Ives 1994;
Stone 2016; Wells 1975). Ives’ (1994) compelling research on Averbuch (a late
Mississippian site), combined with an exhaustive reconstruction of herbal medici-
nals and traditional midwifery practices, points to relatively good reproductive out-
comes in ancient populations. She suggests that females’ early deaths are related to
other factors such as “subsistence strategy, socio-political development, disease
environment, ecology, and historical context,” but not reproductive hazards (1994,
80). However, it is clear that these factors are intricately linked with female lives
and play a role in quality of life and ability to reproduce with or without
complications.
Data on critical obstetrics and occupational stress can clarify exactly how these
interacting variables work with regard to reproduction, workloads, and longevity.
But we must also consider what it means if the structural and physiological pro-
cesses of birth have remained unchanged for centuries. Is it possible that cultural
narratives have shaped the performance and perceptions of risky childbirth today?
New ways of knowing the complex factors that put reproductive-aged females at
risk in the past can help us to more accurately reflect females’ experiences and give
them agency in the present.
Gender Inequality, Not Reproduction
The enduring story that females are enslaved by their wombs and in need of help is
a narrative of risk framed by cultural, scientific, and medical constructions to con-
trol the human female body. These assumptions pervade not only how we interpret
ancient populations through bioarchaeological analysis, but how biomedicine con-
tinues to view the parturient individual. Today, data reveal that females in the devel-
oping world, as well as disenfranchised subpopulations of women in industrialized
nations, have the physical direct burdens of strenuous workloads, chronic ill health,
Table 9.2 Women, Occupational Stress and Biological Consequences

Women occupational
stress Biological consequences
Food
Preparation including: humeral (upper arm) development,
corn grinding, Accessory sacroiliac joints,
cooking, vertebral osteophytic development, possible spondylolisthesis
serving (lower back strain)
bring water
Building/home
Build houses humeral (upper arm) development.
plaster house Accessory sacroiliac joints,
build oven vertebral osteophytic development, possible spondylolisthesis
build hearths Gower back strain)
Childcare
Carrying children humeral (upper arm) development,
vertebral osteophytic development, possible spondylolisthesis
(lower back strain)
Table 9.3 Men, Occupational Stress and Biological Consequences

Men occupational
stress Biological consequences
Food
bring in food humeral (upper-arm) development
Building/home
build houses humeral (upper arm) development,
vertebral osteophytic development, possible spondylolisthesis cower
back strain)
Childcare
(discipline children) no biological consequence
and the stresses of pregnancy, all of which place enormous strains on their bodies
(Harris and Ross 1987, Hussein et al. 2012; Kassebaum 2014; WHO 2016). Females
also have the burdens of invisible stressors, such as childrearing, providing care for
others, domestic violence, lower levels of education, economic disadvantages, and
a lack of representation at all governmental levels (Hussein et al. 2012; MacDonald
2013). Clearly, females’ multiple roles and lower status are connected with poorer
health (Doyle 1995; Hussein et al. 2012).
This chapter offers a way to consider the consequences of normalizing a docile-
fragile female reproductive body as a biological fact, a meta-narrative that continues
to disable female agency in all aspects of life in the past and present. What if we
consider the parturient female in a different way? What if we see childbirth as a
normal process that empowers females and makes them stronger and healthier and
more active members of their community? This would require us to look beyond
maternal morality and unpack the effects of gender inequality and include the voices
of women to create the best practices for them. We should not stop at reproduction.
182 P.K. Stone
Local cultural beliefs and practices that may have helped to manage the stressors of
life for all, but especially for pregnant women, are often at odds with policy narra-
tives that state “…western cultural logic and biomedicine must be delivered and
triumph over aspects of traditional society and culture that appear as ‘barriers’ to
progress…” (MacDonald 2013, 3). But what if new models consider traditional
societal and cultural beliefs?
New Models
The scientific stories we tell as anthropologists frame how females view their own
reproductive bodies and may facilitate institutional enforcement of gender inequal-
ity. As discussed here, the idea that all females need medical help during labor
evolved through biomedical narratives that reflected the trends of the times. The
current biomedical system, which works tirelessly to create standardized models of
difference, assumes need when often there is none. This medically static picture of
the reproductive female body disconnects women from the cultural buffers that have
evolved to support positive outcomes and longevity for mothers. For example, as
Rosenberg (1992) suggests, bipedalism resulted in a uniquely human shift to social
relationships that support successful birth outcomes; obligate midwifery evolved
out of this need. These behaviors mitigate risks by giving support, sharing birth
knowledge, and giving females space to let their bodies give birth (Davis 2004;
Gaskin 2010, 2011). Research has also shown that upright birth positions are linked
to positive outcomes and have been used by human populations across the globe and
through time (Dundes 1987; Englemann 1882). Ignoring birth as a normal physio-
logical process and seeing the womb as pathological and birth as a medical event
legitimize new forms of structural violence that put reproductive females at greater
risk for morbidity and early mortality (Farmer 2004; Stone 2012, 2013).
Locating birth as a medical event results in policies that require women to par-
ticipate in the shift of childbirth from hearth and home to clinical spaces. For many
women in the Global South, compliance can result social and economic instability.
The costs of accessing care and giving birth in approved facilities often exceed fam-
ily income and resources, and compliance can increase morbidity and mortality
(Hussein et al. 2012). Compliance based on a risky birth narrative aligns policy with
the political story of science having authority over all bodies.
Today, more and more research is revealing that biomedicine needs to rethink
and reexplore the processes of birth by locating birth and the birthing females in a
normal biological process. Interventions, including giving birth in a government
clinic, should only be considered when there is a clear risk. Biomedicine should
focus on reduction of infections and stress-related complications that many women
face globally; these strategies would support healthier outcomes in birth and in life.
For example, efforts are underway to bring prenatal, birth, labor, and postnatal care
into communities instead of having women travel to services. A wonderful example
of this type of grassroots care is the work of Mother Health International (MHI).
MHI, based in Uganda and Haiti, is an NGO that works with local women and mid-
wives to create culturally competent birth spaces within the communities they serve.
MHI is “committed to preserving traditional midwifery knowledge and valuing its
importance as culturally specific approaches to women’s health care” that can serve
as a bridge “between high technology obstetric care and the excellent outcomes
provided by the low technology, hands on midwifery model of care in impoverished
and disaster stricken countries” (Mother Health International, 2015).
Rethinking birth as a natural process that more often than not can progress on its
own without interventions is pivotal in policy-making regarding maternal health
initiatives. “Pregnancy is not a disease but a normal physiological process
that women must engage in for the sake of humanity” (Fathalla 1997 as cited by
AbouZahr 2003, 18). Reframing interventions, working directly with communities
and within cultural frameworks, and understanding risk factors beyond pregnancy
and birth will result in better and less costly outcomes for the majority of parturient
women globally.
Anthropologists are uniquely qualified to develop new scientific stories of child-
birth that by incorporate evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, bioarchaeology,
medical anthropology, and the social and cultural understandings of extant popula-
tions to rewrite the narrative of risky childbirth. We can offer new hypotheses that
reveal how “childbirth is an intimate and complex transaction whose topic is physi-
ological and whose language is cultural” (Jordan 1993, 3). Drawing on ethno-
graphic, historic, physiological, and structural understandings of the human body,
we can begin to redefine childbirth and its biological and social components as
dynamic, variable, and active. Rosenberg (1992) argues that the need for females to
engage in childbirth and care for their infants had “profound effects on human social
organization” (118). The reduction in the pelvis and the growth in brain size result-
ing in altricial neonates as well as the social and cultural behaviors surrounding
childbirth and community may be evolutionary legacies that set the path for what
really makes us human. The complex relationships between our behaviors (culture)
and our biology are meant to result in successful childbirth and not maternal
mortality.
Conclusions
The role of the bioarchaeologist is crucial in examining important aspects of health

disparities for females and in situating trauma, violence, disease, mortality, and
morbidity data within broader social and political contexts across time and cultures.
The remains of reproductive-aged females are often ignored because the context for
their deaths seems to be simple: they died because of their reproductive roles. But
females played essential roles in community, roles that are sometimes missed.
Integrating human skeletal remains, ecological data, and contextual information
regarding social and political factors provide new ways for thinking about mater-
nity, risk, and disability.
184 P.K. Stone
Anthropologists have been guilty of creating larger disparities and inequalities

because of how we interpreted skeletal research that linked pelvic size and shape to
reproductive problems for the human female. Because science developed in a social
climate of biological determinism and eugenics, the result has been a deeply
ingrained idea of risky childbirth as an evolutionary “dilemma” that is biologically
determined. It has followed that all human (bipedal) females start off flawed because
of their poor evolutionary (biological) development. This typological approach has
seen little challenge (see Walrath 2003; Stone and Walrath 2006), is widely accepted
as truth, and continues to support the notion that females are problematized by their
reproductive roles. This idea is embedded in today’s medical and obstetric practices
in which female bodies are rendered sick, problematic, and passive, particularly
with regard to the birth process (and notably in relation to male health).
The “biological fact” of difficult childbirth permeates anthropological and medi-
cal dialogues, resulting in a poor understanding of the dynamic nature of the birth
process and the range of variability within the reproductive process. Bioarchaeological
scholarship can disrupt this and offer new insights into how variability can be rec-
ognized while creating new dialogues around the birth process and female resil-
iency. This can result in better birthing experiences for women cross-culturally and
can help to deconstruct current models and assumptions that marginalize or devalue
the experience and lives of females. In the arena of birth, bioarchaeologists are
poised to use science to understand the profound importance of human variability
with a focus on the most human of all experiences – childbirth.
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Chapter 10
Mother, Laborer, Captive, and Leader:
Reassessing the Various Roles that Females
Held Among the Ancestral Pueblo
in the American Southwest
Ryan Harrod and Pamela K. Stone
Contents
Introduction 191
Collecting Indigenous Human Remains in the United States 192
Early Skeletal Collections from the American Southwest 195
The Role of Females Among the Ancestral Pueblo 196
Methodological Approach 198
Excavations: Room 33 at Pueblo Bonito, Kin Bineola, Black Mesa, and La Plata 199
Recognizing Females: Mother, Laborer, Captive, and Leader 202
Discussion: The Complex Lives of Ancestral Pueblo Females 206
Conclusion 207
References 208
Introduction
For over a century and a half, there have been numerous museum, military, and
archaeological surveys and subsequent excavations conducted in the American
Southwest. Consequently, a vast amount of material remains have been collected
and accessioned in repositories throughout the United States and the world. The
majority of the materials (artifactual and skeletal) recovered from these sites prior
to the mid-twentieth century were sent to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Natural History (NMNH), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH),
Harvard’s Peabody Museum, or the Field Museum in Chicago.
R. Harrod (*)
Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Anchorage,
Anchorage, AK, USA
e-mail: rharrod2@alaska.edu
P.K. Stone

192 R. Harrod and P.K. Stone
In this chapter we highlight how paradigm shifts in biological anthropology

altered the questions that researchers ask when excavating new sites or reanalyzing
curated collections. Our primary focus is on shifting how we consider the roles that
women played in the past and on interrogating cultural frameworks used for making
interpretations. In addition to this, there needs to be a rethinking on what the mate-
rial remains (skeletal and cultural) can reveal about the role of women vis-à-vis
men. Females have often been relegated to various reductive roles such as mother,
laborer, or captive. To counter these stereotypic and simplistic interpretations, we
focus on several archaeological sites from the northern Southwest (i.e., Black Mesa,
La Plata, Kin Bineola, and Room 33 at Pueblo Bonito) to offer new bioarchaeologi-
cal interpretations of adult male and females (Fig. 10.1). Informing our analyses are
linked theories about sex and gender roles that invite a more nuanced and inclusive
interpretation. Because females are often left out of the narrative and relegated to
rigid and subordinate roles or, worse, are considered passive or immobilized by
reproduction, this analysis is an important corrective that insists females and males
be considered to be active agents and engaged members of community. We demon-
strate here that a more inclusive and balanced analysis shines new light on who was
considered an elite, a warrior, or a laborer and how life history and health status
reveal a more complex notion of the sexes.
Collecting Indigenous Human Remains in the United States
The osteological collection in the United States, as Buikstra (2006, 11) reminds us,
began as “cabinets of curiosities” that local historical societies held and displayed.
As far back as the mid-1800s, curators and repositories began amassing human
remains for the service of medical and comparative anatomy studies. Collections in
cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C., were used by
medical schools for understanding human anatomy and morphological variation
(Buikstra 2006). In particular, research focused on incorporating human skeletal
remains, particularly crania, from indigenous American groups.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Dr. George Otis of the Army Medical Museum
(AMM) acknowledged the importance of adding human skeletal remains from
Native American communities in his letters (Buikstra 2006; Redman 2016; Thomas
2000; Walker 2000). To expand the collections at the AMM\, he focused on collect-
ing “specimens of human and comparative anatomy” (Lamb 1917, 4). Otis based his
observations of cranial morphology on the methods developed by anatomists like
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Samuel George Morton, and Paul Broca, and he used
his findings on indigenous crania to assign them “biologically” to a lower position on
the human scale (Bieder 1990). The development of anatomical collections, includ-
ing archaeological collections at this time, focused primarily on racial classification
(Bieder 1990, 39). A consequence of this shift is that archaeological human remains
became more valuable for their contribution to expanding the scientific quest for
understanding human variation but in a way that was both typological and racist.
10 Mother, Laborer, Captive, and Leader: Reassessing the Various Roles that Females… 193
Fig. 10.1 Map of the sites in the American Southwest. Created by Harrod using World Map devel-
oped by Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under
CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under CC BY SA
Regardless of ancestry, most often researchers considered the crania of males as

prize additions for any collection. Schiebinger (1993, 1999) provides an overview of
early anatomists and anthropologists in Europe during the late-1700s, suggesting that
men collected male heads over females because of the emphasis on racial comparison.
“When anthropologists did compare women across cultures, their interest centered on
sexual traits – feminine beauty, redness of lips, length and style of hair, size and shape
of breasts or clitorises, degree of sexual desire, fertility, and above all the size, shape, and
position of the pelvis” (Schiebinger 1993, 156; 1999, 25). Sex differences were central
to the inquiries made on female skeletons specifically as they underscored the superior-
ity of males. Thus, these early studies were driven by both racist and sexist agendas.
The focus on male human skeletal remains and crania was not just a European
phenomenon. Morton (1839), an American physician and natural scientist, in
his book Crania Americana, devoted his research to developing racial hier-
archies, putting white or Caucasian males at the top by quantifying cranial
capacity against a racialized framework of intellectual abilities. His work sup-
ported the developing field of race sciences and furthered the goal of measuring
intelligence as a biological factor. Like Morton and the European research of
males highlighted by Schiebinger, many of the people involved in the early col-
lection of the human skeletal remains in America were interested in studying
the natural order of men.
Hrdlička (Smithsonian) and Hooton (Harvard), arguably the founding fathers of
American Physical Anthropology (Spencer 1981), were not immune to a research
agenda that consider males to be superior to females. Both were key players in the
assessment of skeletal remains brought to the major institutions in the East. As the
first curator of physical anthropology at NMNH, Hrdlička also established and was
editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology1 (Spencer 1981, 1982;
Ubelaker 2006). Hooton trained numerous students of biological anthropology, who
then went on to train their own students (Garn and Giles 1995; Spencer 1981, 1982).
One only has to look at the website Academic Phylogeny of Physical Anthropology
(http://www.physanthphylogeny.org) to see the impact Hooton had on the disci-
pline. He was also the first biological anthropologist that conducted what is now
referred to as bioarchaeology (Beck 2006). Hooton, working at the sixteenth-century
Pecos Pueblo site outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, not only excavated burials for
analysis but took into account the archaeological context they were recovered from
to help interpret what the burials could reveal about each individual (Hooton 1930).
While the impact of these two men was profound, their work is framed in a his-
torical period dominated by patriarchal paradigms of division of labor, female fra-
gility, and hysteria (Gourley 2008; Miller 2009). Although both Hrdlička and
Hooton worked with and mentored women (Powell et al. 2006), their research was
primarily focused on the morphological features of males and of proving their supe-
riority (Urla and Swedlund 1995). Urla and Swedlund (1995) discuss the gender
bias present in Hrdlička’s (1925) writings specifically where he used anthropomet-
rics to support his contention that women were biologically inferior, citing that their
smaller brains made them less intelligent. Hooton’s (1931) writings also reflect this
same gendered bias even as he compared women to other apes.
However, it was not all about race and gender science. Some researchers saw the
collection of skulls of Native Americans as a way to preserve and prolong the inevi-
table “disappearance or extinction of American Indians [and]. . .their loss to sci-
ence” (Bieder 1990, 42). This need to save a so-called dying people based on an
assumption of extinction was not motivated by a concern for the ethics of how the
remains of Native Americans were obtained. There are numerous documented
events where collection of human remains for museums was done in unethical and
The journal is still in production and remains the leading academic journal for the discipline.
1
dishonorable ways. Here we look specifically at two events. Both cases follow the
violent death of indigenous individuals in which their crania were collected. The
first case occurred in October of 1873 in Oregon where four Modoc men were hung
at Fort Klamath (McNally 2016). Their four heads were removed, collected, and
shipped to the AMM. When they arrived all that identified them was the label on the
box which read: “specimens of natural history” (Bieder 1990, 42). This served to
erase the identities of the men, the context within which they lived and died, and
their connection to humanity. The label emphasized the value of these naturalized
specimens for science.
The second event took place in June 1902 in northern Mexico were 124 Yaqui
men, women, and children were massacred by Mexican troops (Bauer-Clapp and
Pérez 2014, 176–177). Heads were removed from the dead bodies and sent back to
the repository in New York City (AMNH) for research. In this case, each individu-
al’s head was stripped of its context, identity, and history, and each became part of
a collection in the name of science. Today these same remains have been repatriated
back to their homeland communities in Mexico.
Early Skeletal Collections from the American Southwest
In the American Southwest, there were a number of early explorers and archaeolo-
gists conducting research that set the foundations for understanding the cultures that
inhabited the region for over a thousand years. Richard Wetherill, Adolph Bandelier,
Frank Cushing, Alfred Kidder, Earl Morris, and George Pepper, and others, were
primarily interested in the material culture (i.e., architecture, site layout, ceramics,
and stone tools), but they all encountered human skeletal remains in their many
expeditions. Assumptions of identity were made in the field based on their own
understandings of gendered divisions of labor which were framed in Eurocentric
binary notions of males and females. It was not until physical anthropologists exam-
ined the remains that a better understanding of the sex of the individuals could be
made, albeit they were still steeped in patriarchal Western notions and never consid-
ered the other contextual information regarding the burials or their accompanying
material culture.
Research in the American Southwest had the same roots as other scientific disci-
plines that was informed by racial and gender biases. But in the 1970s, there was a
shift in the ways that researchers considered females in the ancient world. This
developing focus on females in archaeological contexts coincides with the second-
wave feminist movement of the 1970s when anthropology developed new models of
feminist inquiry that encouraged framing research projects in ways that considered
sex and gender more carefully (Conkey and Spector 1984; Gero and Conkey 1991).
Our analyses here continue this focus by rethinking early assessments about the
roles that females played in the Ancestral Pueblo communities in the American
Southwest, c. AD 850–1300.
Reanalyzing the Early Southwest Collections
In contrast to early research that focused solely on males, this study evaluates
evidence of social status and health among adult females compared to their age-
matched male counterparts in the precolonial American Southwest. Data on the
interrelationships among reproduction, occupational stress, and trauma from a num-
ber of burial collections from archaeological sites representing the Ancestral Pueblo
peoples reveal females were strong and worked hard, were sometimes targeted for
violence, and bore the brunt of comorbidities related to diet and poor health.
Clinical research clearly shows that women in marginal and agricultural settings
in contemporary times are vulnerable to higher rates of morbidity and early mortal-
ity due to preventable pregnancy-related health problems exacerbated by nutritional
deficiencies, labor demands, and heavy workloads (Population Reports 1988;
Filippi et al. 2006). It is highly likely that these same issues impacted women living
in marginal settings in the ancient world as well. Many studies of ancient health
from agricultural groups show that there are similar patterns of intense workloads
and nutritional deficiencies particularly for reproductive-aged females (Cohen and
Crane-Kramer 2007). The Ancestral Pueblo people represent an excellent test case
for examining the relationship between women’s health and other factors because
there are skeletal collections that represent long chronologies and continuous occu-
pation in one area (Stone 2000). In addition, data on health can be garnered from the
large collections of human remains removed from the Southwest in conjunction
with historic and contemporary documentation. By combining biological data with
the archaeological and ethnographic information, women’s roles can be contextual-
ized. This adds to the growing body of data on the ways that reproduction and work
patterns affect maternal morbidity and mortality.
The Role of Females Among the Ancestral Pueblo
The Ancestral Pueblo people are archaeologically defined by the elaborate

masonry architecture they built in the Southwest which encompasses northern
New Mexican and Arizona as well as southern Colorado and Utah. The earliest
Ancestral Puebloans lived in small pithouse villages and relied on a mixed farming
and foraging economy. As maize became more of a major staple of the diet and
communities became more stable, ceramics, aboveground structures, and ceremo-
nial pit structures appeared.
Through time as agriculture becomes more central to the diet, there is a shift in
the social and political structure of the culture away from smaller semipermanent
pithouse villages with homogeneous populations toward more aggregated and larger
communities (Wilshusen 2017). With these shifts there are clear signs of sociopo-
litical differentiation. Clearly these changes had an impact on adult females, but
very little has been explored thus far.
With the shift to intensive agriculture, there are three major role changes that
occur that directly affected the lives of the Ancestral Puebloan females:
1. A greater amount of time was necessary for processing maize, and this resulted
in a higher labor demand differentially for adult females (Spielmann 1995;
Whitley 2009).
2. The technological development of ceramic vessels that provide a means for
cooking and storing the maize also resulted in a greater labor demand on females
(Crown and Wills 1995).
3. There is an increase in population size likely due to decreased birth spacing, and
this places more burdens on women (Lekson 2015; Nelson 1995). Thus, even
though very few paleopathology or bioarchaeology studies focus on women’s
health and patterns of labor and work during the shift from foraging to farming
in the Southwest, there are reasons to believe that females played a pivotal role
in the success of these populations.
Differences Between Foragers and Agriculturalists
For our purpose here, the term foraging is defined as food procurement through
hunting, fishing, and gathering without having to drastically alter the surrounding
environment (Panter-Brick et al. 2001; Svizzero and Tisdell 2016). While forag-
ers can and often do modify their environment, the extent of the modification
differs from agriculture communities where subsistence involves labor intensive
activities including the planting, harvesting, and storage of the yield and plan-
ning for future crops (Harris 1989). The use of Harris’ definition allows for the
inclusion of Ancestral Pueblo populations even though they lack domesticated
animals or a formal irrigation system and live in semipermanent villages using
tools like digging sticks.
Historically, agriculture was considered the world’s greatest technological
advancement. It was believed that agriculture provided an efficient way to nourish
the famished foragers who spent the majority of their time hunting elusive animals
and gathering scarce resources (Diamond 1987). Early researchers used agriculture
as a means for delineating between advanced and primitive societies, suggesting
that this was also tied to varying levels of cognitive advancement (Barker 2006).
These same researchers held a number of tightly held beliefs about the perceived
benefits of agriculture. These so-called benefits included providing the only mecha-
nism for populations to establish permanent settlements and to rapidly expand and
to work less for a higher return. This early conceptualization of “agriculture as
superior to foraging” reflects the ethnocentric outlook of the early researchers
(Crown 2001; Lukacs 2008) and does not take into account the direct consequences
that have been documented by studying the human remains from agriculturalists
(Cohen and Armelagos 1984). In contrast to the studies purporting the benefits of
agriculture, ethnographic, osteological, and archaeological data suggest that an
agrarian lifestyle actually requires a greater amount of work, is a more risk-prone

subsistence strategy, is characterized by the development of disease, and often
increases in interpersonal violence (e.g., see case studies in Cohen and Armelagos
1984; Cohen and Crane-Kramer 2007; Pinhasi and Stock 2011).
Methodological Approach
Our methodological approach is grounded in bioarchaeology, and this means that

our inquiry is focused on the interactions and intersections of biological bodies
(skeletons), the archaeological context in which the bodies were recovered (mortu-
ary features), and other historical, ecological, and material cultural data that can
inform our analysis (such as ethnographic analogies). This also includes an under-
standing of the context in which the data (skeletons, archaeological materials) were
collected and curated. In summary, a bioarchaeological approach necessitates the
reconstruction of as much context as possible for the burials associated with the
archaeological sites. It is only through this mosaic of analyses (e.g., landscape,
architecture, grave goods, cultural remains, skeletal remains, mortuary practices,
and ethnographic analogies) that it is possible to reconstruct the lives of past people
in ways that highlight their complexities and nuances.
The interpretation of human skeletal remains requires an evaluation of the skel-
etal transcript (e.g., what gets written on the bones and how it can be read) to inform
us about responses to stressors. To do this we examine the presence, severity, and
status of meaningful skeletal lesions, the source of the stressor(s) (environmental or
cultural), and the effect of the buffering systems. At the most basic level of analysis,
a biological profile is established for each individual in an archaeological skeletal
assemblage. Multiple skeletal correlates are utilized including markers of nutrition
(e.g., stature, anemia), activity (e.g., robusticity and entheses), health (e.g., patho-
logical conditions), and evidence of trauma (resulting from both violence and acci-
dental or occupational activities).
In contrast to historic anatomical collections with known identities, factors like
age and sex are largely unknown for ancient people and must be evaluated using
state-of-the-art methodologies. These methodologies for sex differentials have been
developed utilizing anatomical collections. For the bioarchaeologist, determination
of sex using the skull relies on the analysis of differences in the size and shape or
morphology of different regions of the cranium as well as the mandible (Buikstra
and Ubelaker 1994). The problem is that these estimates are not always very accu-
rate and can vary depending on the population (Garvin et al. 2014; Lewis and Garvin
2016; Musilová et al. 2016; Walker 2008). In the Southwest as example looking
specifically at the archaeological site of Pueblo Bonito and burials from Rooms 32
and 33, Marden (2011) found that the estimation of sex varied noticeably by
researcher. She shows that, for example, T. Dale Stewart misidentified sex for the
cranial remains because he failed to look at the postcranial pelvic bones which are
more dimorphic and accurate (Marden 2011).
Reconstructing the identity of human skeletal remains from an archaeological

context relies on using established methods of the times, and there have been many
changes over time as new standards are developed (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994;
Dudar et al. 2011). The result is that with more accurate analyses of sex, age, and
pathology, new stories can be told about the people in these collections. Simply by
reclassifying an individual as a female instead of a male fundamentally changes the
narrative. Using newer methods in addition to framing questions that are informed
by theories about sex and complex biocultural interactions, the roles of females and
males can break out of stereotypic and reductionist categories.
xcavations: Room 33 at Pueblo Bonito, Kin Bineola, Black

E
Mesa, and La Plata
Using several sites in the American Southwest demonstrates how over the last century
there was a shift from a focus on morphology as an indicator of race, toward the biocul-
tural reconstruction of the daily lives of people who lived at these sites. While it is
believed that early Spanish soldiers were the first Europeans to see Chaco Canyon fol-
lowed by others who wrote about, photographed, and mapped the region, it was not until
Richard Wetherill began excavations in 1896 that the archaeological significance came
into focus, spurring over a century of excavations and research (Lekson 1999, 2015).
Chaco Canyon
Excavation of several of the large Pueblos known as great houses in Chaco Canyon
began in the late 1800s and extended into the early 1900s. Focus on architecture (and
stabilization) and cultural artifacts was at the center of these excavations. Matthews
from the AMM visited some of these sites noting that they were important based on
Navajo oral traditions and their story of “The Gambler.” In this story, Noqoìlpi (aka:
the Gambler) bet against the people and forced them to build the Pueblos to appease
him (Matthews 1889). However, Wetherill and others early on believed that these
sites may have been the center for larger sociopolitical interaction within the region
(Irwin-Williams 1972). But architecture and cultural remains were not the only
finds; human remains were also uncovered throughout all these excavations.
For many of the sites at Chaco Canyon, Pepper and Hrdlička, and then later Judd,
helped to excavate and archive the human remains. This included the largest site within
the Chaco system, Pueblo Bonito. Hrdlička was interested in the tradition of morphology
as identity, and so he focused on comparison of the individuals recovered from Pueblo
Bonito with remains from other Southwest sites including Jemez and Puye (Hrdlička
1931). The problem is that the individuals he was comparing were from temporally,
spatially, and culturally distinctive groups. Thus, the focus on attempting to measure and
define genetic relationships kept the research focus using skeletal remains very narrow.
Chaco Phenomenon
Chaco Canyon is a prominent site that developed around 900 AD when structures
were built in a remote part of the San Juan Basin. More Pueblos were added to the
canyon over the next hundred years. Chaco continued to develop and eventually
established a regional political system that Cynthia Irwin-William (1972) described
as the Chaco Phenomenon. Characteristics of the Chaco Phenomenon include a far-
flung network of Chaco outliers, the development of real and symbolic roads, and
the creation of an extensive trade network of exotic goods that included copper,
concha shell, jet, turquoise, macaw feathers, and chocolate (Pepper 1920). This all
reflects an extensive trade network that connected Chaco to Mesoamerica.
Pueblo Bonito: Room 33
During the rise and decline of the Chaco Phenomenon, there is one great house,
Pueblo Bonito, that has been identified as a possible regional center that controlled
the economic and ritual exchanges in the region (Harrod 2012; Lekson 1999, 2015;
Neitzel 2003; Plog and Heitman 2010; Price et al. 2017). Within Pueblo Bonito,
there were human remains recovered from the rooms identified by number as 32 and
33. Reconstructions by Marden (2011) suggest the burials were all originally
interred in Room 33. This context is thought to be an elite burial site because of the
elaborate mortuary context. Fourteen individuals were found interred in this room
(Pepper 1920). One individual could not be analyzed because the skull had been
given away to a researcher in South Africa, a practice that was common in the
1920s,but that would be considered illegal today (Marden 2011). The individuals in
Room 33 were buried with exotic trade goods (Hull et al. 2014; Pepper 1920; Watson
et al. 2015). Isotopic and DNA data obtained from the remains indicates they were
likely local and were of high status (Coltrain et al. 2007; Plog and Heitman 2010;
Price et al. 2017). However, the analyses looking for high-status individuals in this
room have been primarily focused on the males with less emphasis on the females.
Kin Bineola
Kin Bineola is an archaeological site that is slightly southwest of Pueblo Bonito

(less than 15 kilometers outside the canyon). Burials from this site were excavated
by Hrdlička and others during the same time as Room 33. Unfortunately, much
less is known about this site because of problematic collection practices and the
fact that the burials were interred in stone cysts outside of the main great house and
without any elaborate grave goods. Remains recovered included both females and
males. This site may have been important in the Chaco Phenomenon, and several
Fig. 10.2 Perimortem
fracture on a female from
Kin Bineola (catalog
number H/15064).
Courtesy of the Division of
Anthropology, American
Museum of Natural
History
researchers have suggested it could have been a southern entry point to the main
sites in Chaco Canyon (Judge 1989; Marshall et al. 1979; Powers et al. 1983).
Burial excavations at Kin Bineola resulted in the collection and curation of
eleven females, eight males, one indeterminate individual, and fourteen subadults.
According to the field notes at AMNH, the burials were found in a two-tier stone
cyst outside of the site, and each burial contained at least one piece of pottery. The
mortuary context had been disturbed before, but it was suggested there could have
been approximately 100 burials in this context. In general, the preservation was
good but the burials were not always complete. What is interesting about this site is
that there is a high incidence cranial trauma. Out of eleven females, seven presented
with some form of cranial trauma (Fig. 10.2). When compared to other sites in this
region, this frequency is very high (Harrod 2012).
Black Mesa
Bodies excavated from the numerous archaeological sites on Black Mesa in north-
eastern Arizona were analyzed with the intent to reconstruct both individual and
population identity. Black Mesa was a harsh and marginal environment for farming
with few good locations for agriculture and with wide fluctuations in climatic and
hydrologic variables for successful harvests. However, based on the archaeological
reconstruction of the sites in terms of settlement patterns, storage features, and
trade, it appears that people living at Black Mesa effectively buffered themselves
from these harsh conditions by reducing sexual division of labor and sharing respon-
sibility in subsistence activities and other tasks. The result is that Debra Martin
1991) found that females were very robust and strong in their upper bodies and this
was on par with age-matched males. The focus on sex differences and the question
of what role(s) females played in the community at Black Mesa have been greatly
expanded due to an increased interest in comparing occupational stress markers to
quantify robusticity instead of assuming larger males worked harder and longer than
smaller females.
La Plata
The archaeological site of La Plata in northern New Mexico is an important site

because there is strong evidence for female captives. In contrast to the environment
at Black Mesa, La Plata was a relatively well-watered region that was referred to
by archaeologists as a “bread basket” because it seemed like a great place to live –
plenty of food and central to regional centers of power (Toll 1993). Analysis of 66
individuals dated to AD 1000 by Martin et al. (2001) found an unexpectedly high
rate of trauma and morbidity among a subset of the adult females in this collection.
The results of their analysis show that of twelve females, nine of those had multiple
and serious healed traumas in the form of cranial depression fractures, face and
nose fractures, rib fractures, and vertebral trauma. As a group, these women also
had the most severe cases of infection and anemia and exhibited more musculo-
skeletal stress markers. Finally, they were all in unusual burial positions suggesting
that when they died, they were not afforded the same burial treatment as other
members of the group (see Martin 1997).
Recognizing Females: Mother, Laborer, Captive, and Leader
Analysis of these selected archaeological sites and the burials retrieved from them
provides clues into the lived experience of females and the various roles that they
may have held in the Ancestral Pueblo world. In these examples above, there is
empirical evidence that instead of being viewed as passive members of their com-
munities, they were variously reproductively active mothers, hard laborers, domi-
nated captives, and high-status leaders. This approach demonstrates that Ancestral
Pueblo communities were marked by adaptations for flexibility and responsiveness
to change by both sexes. The biocultural approach that focuses on the interaction
between culture and biology is critical for broadening perspectives about females in
the past. Older rigid notions of sex role differences have been debunked, and it is
timely to readdress ideas about female agency, resistance, and resilience and the
multitude of roles that they may have fulfilled.
Mothers
The general consensus of archaeological demographic profiles is that reproductive-

aged females who died young did so as a result of childbirth-related complications
(Stone 2000, 2016). This narrative deactivates females in the discussion of the past.
But recent work in bioarchaeology that utilizes skeletal data and ethnographic anal-
ogies has dismantled the older tropes. In Ancestral Pueblo communities, the oppor-
tunity to draw lines between historic accounts of Puebloan groups with the ancient
past is unsurpassed. From this we can infer that while pregnant, nursing, and rearing
children, Puebloan woman were also engaged in many tasks within the community.
Bioarchaeologically the rigors of occupational activities have been increasingly
addressed through occupational stress makers (Finnegan and Faust 1974; Kennedy
1989; Trotter 1937; Wesson and Martin 1995). The stresses of pregnancy (Wells
1975; WHO 2016) on the health of women can also be examined obstetrically look-
ing at pelvic morphological features.
Data collected on occupational stress and pelvic architecture from Black Mesa,
and Pueblo Bonito combined with ethnobiological interpretations of lifestyle can be
used to discuss the relationships between obstetric complications, female workloads
and occupation, and mortality for younger females versus old females. Empirical
data on age at death, pelvic constriction and obstetric complications, and occupa-
tional stress can be contextualized within a biocultural framework to hypothesize
the synergistic relationship between patterns of increased or difficult work-related
labor and the stresses that pregnancy places on these females. This strongly suggests
that females worked hard, gave birth, and nursed and raised children, and when they
died early, it was more than parturition that contribute to this early mortality. The
results reveal how bioarchaeological and biocultural data can be used to inform
interpretations regarding the quality and quantity of life for females in the past. That
they were mothers is a given; that they were mothers who worked hard, produced
food, shared in political leadership, and were the targets for violence and enslave-
ment is a new information.
Laborers
At Black Mesa, the females and males were equally robust in terms of upper and
lower body strength, suggesting that they both engaged in equal amounts of hard,
habitual, and rigorous labor. This could imply that at Black Mesa, there was more of
an egalitarian political-economic organization and this maps on well with what
Fig. 10.3 Antemortem
fracture on a female from
Room 33 in Pueblo Bonito
(catalog number H/3660).
Courtesy of the Division of
Anthropology, American
Museum of Natural
History
archaeologists have suggested. And, in contrast to the other archaeological sites, at

La Plata some of the females seem to have been at risk for violence and enslave-
ment. There is some suggestion that raiding and abduction of women and children
were practiced in the Southwest by archaeologists (Kohler and Cramer Turner
2006), and the bioarchaeological studies back these ideas up. Given the time inten-
sive nature of agriculture, it is possible that females raided from other groups became
part of the labor force not by choice but through intimidation and violent practices.
In other cultures from the Americas, Powell (1991) and Tung (2007) suggest that
high rates of trauma for males are due to high-status males being prone to more inju-
ries involving the head as they engage in face-to-face combat to gain status. One of the
females found in Room 33 had a cranial trauma. It is possible that this injury was the
result of status-seeking conflict given the high status of this female (Fig. 10.3). This
example complicates the picture of males fighting to enhance their status by suggest-
ing that females also may have engaged in fighting for similar reasons. Females from
Room 33 also had well developed and robust muscle markers suggesting that they
were also involved in hard and rigorous labor patterns that utilized the lower body.
What these examples from Black Mesa, La Plata, and Pueblo Bonito demon-
strate is the “messiness” of the findings when the questions being asked are framed
to expose a range of nuanced differences and similarities for males and females.
Older narratives would have made assumptions about males being the hard laborers
and females sitting in the households producing children. Yet, here we see strong
women working together with men in egalitarian situations at Black Mesa, captive
women being forced to work hard at La Plata, and high-status females who were
also engaged in activities that produced strength and robusticity similar to age-
matched males at Pueblo Bonito.
Captives
The human remains from Kin Bineola appear to be from the same general time
period as the remains from other sites in nearby Chaco Canyon (Marshall et al.
1979). As mentioned above, seven of the eleven women had healed cranial trauma
with one whose blow to the head proved fatal. The occurrence of cranial and facial
trauma at Kin Bineola is similar to the pattern of trauma seen on the females from
La Plata that have been interpreted to be captives.
Archaeologists Kohler and Kramer Turner (2006) for archaeological sites
throughout the Southwest have proposed that raiding for women would have made
sense given the need for a large labor pool to produce maize and other crops in des-
ert conditions. In stark contrast are the female remains found at Pueblo Bonito’s
Room 33, where only one of the five females had a trauma. This is also the case at
other Southwest sites such as Aztec Ruins (a later large site in the region) where
four of the eleven females had a head injury.
What this research highlights is that earlier studies paid so little attention to data
derived from female burials that males became the focus for their roles as elites,
warriors, and farmers. There is now good evidence that females also played roles as
elites, warriors, and leaders, in addition to being sometimes taken as captives and
kept as slaves. Without combining all of the available data sets, these complex and
nuanced roles for women would never have come into view.
Leaders
In the original seminal osteological work on Chaco Canyon, Nancy Akins (1986)
compared all the burials at Pueblo Bonito to burials from a number of smaller sites
throughout the Canyon. She found that the two men buried under an artificial floor
at the bottom of Room 33 were different from the others. Looking at what has been
assumed to be higher-status males, Akins found a pattern of better health, greater
stature, and more elaborate mortuary context compared to the other males in Pueblo
Bonito and at the small sites in the region. Thus, her analyses complicated the origi-
nal idea that all of the males in Room 33 were high status. Her analysis showed that
perhaps some were, but others were not.
However, as mentioned above, there were also females in Room 33. Originally
when the site was first discovered, one of the original excavators of Chaco Canyon,
Marietta Wetherill, provided the following description of the burials: “The skeletons
of thirteen women were lying against the wall clear around the room and every one
of them had a hole in their skulls. They were his wives, perhaps, to go to the afterlife
with him” (Wetherill, 2003, 62). This romanticized (and very wrong) interpretation
of the burials in Room 33 at Pueblo Bonito is problematic on several levels. First,
there were not thirteen females and none of them had “holes” in their cranium. This
is an example of how researchers can make an interpretation based on old stereo-
types of elite male kings being sent to the other world with sacrificed females to
attend to him on his way. This quote was reprinted in the Reader’s Digest series and
Ancient Mysteries, and Leonard Nimoy used this sensationalized story of sacrific-
ing women to elite men in one of the series shows. In many ways, this fictional
account of the burials from Room 33 only served to reinforce widely held sexist
ideas about males and the power that they wield.
Discussion: The Complex Lives of Ancestral Pueblo Females
The osteological data collected from skeletal remains can be used to clarify the
importance of females in the past. The empirical data used in the studies from these
Southwest archaeological sites clearly suggests that females were complex, active,
and engaged in decision-making and politics. They were strong and worked hard,
and they were sometimes better off than previously assumed. Finally, some females
may have played just as important roles as males in labor and leadership. The
deployment of a bioarchaeological approach that deviates from the way that human
remains were assessed in the past opens up new ways of knowing about the activi-
ties and experiences of people in the past.
In Room 33 the focus on females buried there revealed that past analyses mis-
identified some of the individuals and this limited the interpretive power. Early
assessments also assumed that only males had high social status. This current
analysis strongly suggests that the females may have also been elites, not hand-
maids to powerful males which earlier interpretations suggested.
Very recent isotopic and DNA analysis also supports the presence of higher-
status individuals. For Room 33, two of the males had high levels of nitrogen indi-
cating a diet rich in meat as compared to other Ancestral Pueblo people throughout
the region (Plog and Heitman 2010). Isotopes also suggest that the Room 33 indi-
viduals were locals who at a locally based diet. The DNA data showed that two of
the females were genetically related through the maternal line (Bower 2017; Price
et al. 2017), and this finding has led to ideas of power females who passed their
status on through a matrilineal line.
While one female presented with head trauma, and could have been a victim of
violence, she could have just as likely been a warrior. Female combatants or warriors
are often overlooked in the past (Stone 2001). Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons, an
early anthropologists conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Southwest, offers
some support for this notion of Pueblo females as warriors. In her discussion of the
Hopi kachina culture, she offers three examples of women as warriors that include
the impersonation of warrior kachina girl, a war society made of women, and women
warriors using poison from Spider Grandmother on bows and arrows and their bod-
ies (Parsons 1939). Parsons (1940) also describes the story of a wife who is ostra-
cized by her husband after he is tricked by his friend who claims the wife was
unfaithful. In the story the wife disguised as a man becomes a warrior and eventually
she comes back to save her husband and destroy the friend that tricked him.
Looking beyond the regional political center at Pueblo Bonito, there is evidence
that some females may have had very different social positions. Marginalized or
subordinated females may have been at risk for violence and abuse as is seen at La
Plata and Kin Bineola.
The goal of revealing all of these roles is to demonstrate that much like the focus
on males who have been studied as hunters, warriors, and leaders, the females of
any society also held multiple roles and were just as important in social organization
and functions of communities. If we are to really comprehend the roles and posi-
tions of females in ancient societies, more specific information from the skeletal
remains, the mortuary contexts, and the archaeological sites need to be integrated
into a single analysis.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges for Ancestral Pueblo communities from these newer stud-
ies are at odds with the classic notion of early populations in which all females were
assumed to be biologically equipped primarily to birth babies. In reality, females
engaged in many other activities that were in addition to reproduction. New ways of
knowing Ancestral Puebloan people through an integrated and biocultural approach
in bioarchaeology have been demonstrated.
In the American Southwest, scholarship utilizing gender theory has provided new
models for how to think about to include females and children as active agents of
social and cultural change that is not patterned to contemporary, Western ideals
(Claassen 1992; Gero and Conkey 1991; Hays-Gilpin 1995; Stone 2000; Nelson
1997; Walde and Willows 1991). Some have also synthesized early ethnographic
research in the Southwest (Lowell 1991; Stone 2000, and this volume) and show
how activities within historic Hopi and other Pueblo communities can be used to
understand the biological stress markers. As we considered the role of reproductive-
aged females in the American Southwest, we need to consider all the roles that they
may have played. Some may have served as leaders, while others may have been
captives and forced into labor. We can also suggest that some females were instru-
mental in the maintenance of a successful subsistence in harsh environments.
The reanalysis of human skeletal remains collected in the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries is crucial because the questions we are asking now have changed and
our ability to estimate markers of identity has improved since the early days of
building anatomical collections or reconstructing race based on craniometrics. To
truly reconstruct a biohistory of the individuals and population we are studying, we
need to recognize these “new ways of knowing” the past. In addition, the incorpora-
tion of the archaeological context and bioarchaeological signatures left on the
remains leaves us new ways of considering the toll that activities had on female
health, resiliency, and mortality (as compared to the males).
In conclusion, we know that across these sites, females worked hard (as hard as
males), at habitually rigorous and hard activities. In reviewing the correlations
between activities and biological stresses, it is clear that not all activities result in
lesions on the skeleton, but we can begin to see how long-term habitual activities that
challenged females physically day-after-day may affect them. With the addition of
reproduction and the depletion associated with pregnancy, parturition, lactation,
weaning, and child-rearing, it is clear that that Pueblo life was demanding on females,
and this strongly suggests that it is more than just pregnancy that put mothers at risk
for morbidity and mortality. The biological characteristic of females can no longer
be viewed as static and restricting relative to female’s potential roles in societies.
Through the use of an integrated biocultural approach, the contours of female’s lives
can be characterized with more precision and specificity. We have provided some
examples of the insights and directions that this approach can produce.
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Chapter 11
A Skull’s Tale: From Middle Bronze Age
Subject to Teaching Collection “Object”
Madison Long and Alexis T. Boutin
Contents
onstructing an Archaeological Subject: The “Warrior” from Middle Bronze Age Canaan
C 215
Becoming a Teaching Collection “Object”: Skull 901 AEH 66 218
Theorizing Subjects and Objects 221
Re-subjectifying the Skull Through Teaching 223
Conclusion 226
References 227
In 1964, the American Expedition to Hebron (AEH) began its first of three field
seasons of archaeological work at Tell er-Rumeide in the Palestinian territories. One
discovery was a cave dated to the Middle Bronze Age II that held eight burials,
which the excavators named Tomb Test 4. Among its occupants was an “aged man”
(Chadwick 2005, 29) who had been buried on his left side in association with a
bronze toggle pin and a large bronze dagger. This burial was interpreted as belong-
ing to the well-documented Canaanite tradition of “warrior burials.” Approximately
four decades later, Dr. William C. (“Bill”) Poe, a participant in the Hebron expedi-
tion in 1966, donated a skull that had adorned the shelves of his office at Sonoma
State University (SSU) to one of us (Boutin) and the SSU Anthropology Department.
This skull belongs to the “Canaanite warrior” buried in Tomb Test 4 at Tell er-
Rumeide. More than three millennia and seven thousand miles separate him from
his place of origin, and the tale that can be told about his journey reflects the history
of archaeology in the Middle East and its role in regional geopolitics, as well as the
potentialities of collaborative research.
Drawing on multiple lines of evidence from osteology, archaeology, and oral his-
tory, this chapter explores the story of the skull not only from his life to his death but
M. Long (*)
Department of Anthropology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA
e-mail: longma17@students.ecu.edu
A.T. Boutin
Department of Anthropology, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA, USA
e-mail: alexis.boutin@sonoma.edu

214 M. Long and A.T. Boutin
from a subject of Canaanite Hebron to an object of study in twenty-first-century

California. Its telling requires several questions to be addressed. First, how have
archaeologists constituted this “warrior” as a subject of Middle Bronze Age Canaan?
Second, how does the skull’s fate illustrate broader trends in Near Eastern archaeol-
ogy and osteology? And finally, to what extent can this skull’s use in a teaching
collection restore his subjectivity? Many answers can be drawn from archaeological
and osteological evidence, as per standard bioarchaeological procedure: this in itself
poses a rare opportunity, as the skull represents the only skeletal remains from
ancient Hebron that are currently available for study. But this chapter also offers a
unique contribution in its use of oral history, thanks to the participation of the per-
son who donated the skull. Poe has made himself readily available for consultation,
from assisting Boutin with the creation of a provenience statement for the skull in
2009 to providing an oral history to Long in 2016 and answering innumerable ques-
tions in between.1 The resulting exploration of the skull’s transition from ancient
human subject to modern-day teaching collection object is enriched immeasurably
and, we argue, should act as a model for bioarchaeologists who have the opportunity
to consult with stewards of curated collections of human skeletal remains.
Oral history and other communicative methods of stakeholder involvement can
provide valuable information to a bioarchaeological project. Their use is infrequent,
but the occasions are notable. In one well-known example, criticism from members
of the descendant community at the African Burial Ground in New York regarding
the US General Services Administration’s handling of the excavation resulted in a
transfer of leadership to Howard University, a distinguished African-American
research university, and an entirely new and collaborative research design (Blakey
2010). At the Medical College of Georgia, when the remains of illicitly obtained
and dissected cadavers were discovered unexpectedly, ethnographic methods were
used to consult with descendant communities, who in turn influenced the research
questions and interpretations of human remains and artifacts (Curtis-Richardson
1997). In the case of Philadelphia’s First African Baptist Church Cemetery, modern-
day members of the church were involved in, and added meaning to, various parts
of the project, from providing historical information to participating in the reburial
process that took place after the remains had been studied (Roberts and McCarthy
1995). Consultation with Native American and Hawaiian peoples is an essential part
of each collection inventory and repatriation conducted in compliance with the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Although the
relevance of oral tradition for establishing cultural affiliation between human
remains and modern Native American communities has long been argued (e.g.,
Echo-Hawk 2000), it is only recently that oral traditions have begun to be consid-
ered evidentiary in a court of law (Smith 2016). Each of these cases demonstrates
how communication with living peoples regarding the study of the dead can guide
the way that bioarchaeological research is conducted, while also highlighting a
dearth of this type of information being used within the discipline.
1
Long interviewed Poe on April 15, 2016 according to the methods put forth in Doing Oral History
(Ritchie 2014). The interview was recorded on an iPhone 5 s and lasted a total of 43 min and 29 s.
11 A Skull’s Tale: From Middle Bronze Age Subject to Teaching Collection “Object” 215
In the chapter that follows, we trace the transformation of an elderly man from
subject to object and offer ways that his subjectivity can be restored. Archaeologists
drew on his skeletal remains in their mortuary contexts to constitute him as a “war-
rior” of Middle Bronze Age Canaan. Osteological methods and long-term display
made his skull into an uncontextualized object. But the application of theoretical
lenses, historical perspectives, and oral history evidence enables us to work through
the subject-object divide. In its new classroom setting, his skull can help students
reflect critically on anthropological praxis and ways of restoring his subjectivity.
onstructing an Archaeological Subject: The “Warrior”

C
from Middle Bronze Age Canaan
Tell er-Rumeide (Arabic)/Tel Rumeida (Hebrew), the site of ancient Hebron, sits
inside the contemporary city of Hebron (Fig. 11.1), some 30 km SSW of Jerusalem.
The Tell has been judged to be around 4.9 hectares in size (Burke 2004). The AEH
held excavation seasons at Tell er-Rumeide during 1964–1966 under the direction
of Philip C. Hammond of the Princeton Theological Seminary. Although the project
was initially intended to last a minimum of eight field seasons, political turmoil in
the region, including the 6-Day War, ended it prematurely (Chadwick 1992, 29).
After graduating from the Princeton Theological Seminary in May 1966, Poe
joined the AEH as an area supervisor. The AEH was backed by a workforce com-
prised of American students working alongside Jordanian men. Each excavation
unit was headed by the site supervisor and his assistant, both of whom were students
from the United States. In addition to these supervisors, each group consisted of five
paid diggers from Jordan, whose experience and knowledge varied. Of these five
men, one was always, according to Poe, “highly qualified” (Poe 2016, personal
communication). This individual was usually given the task of working with the
pick, was paid a higher wage than the others, and had usually experienced many
archaeological excavations. The other four Jordanian workers in each group
included one whose job was to work with a backhoe and remove excavated materi-
als, which would then be transported to a designated location by the remaining three
workmen (Poe 2016, personal communication).
The recovery of human remains was not a high priority for the AEH. As an area
supervisor overseeing three excavation units in an olive grove, Poe reports that they
“never found the slightest bit of a bone anywhere on the project that [he] was work-
ing on” (2016, personal communication). However, human remains were recovered
from two locations during the 1966 excavations. The first was a burial cave like the
one from which skull 901 AEH 66 was disinterred (Poe 2016, personal communica-
tion). The second was on one of the site’s lowest terraces: a Byzantine period cem-
etery that continued to be excavated regardless of the fact that, according to Poe,
“nobody was even interested in the forensics of Byzantine period stuff” (2016, per-
sonal communication). This lack of interest in the information to be learned from
Fig. 11.1 Political map of Israel from 2001, with location of Hebron indicated by authors. Map
produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency (Downloaded from the Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_
and_asia/israel_pol01.jpg)
human remains about past lifeways was typical of Near Eastern archaeology until
very recently (Porter and Boutin 2014), insofar as they were thought not to contrib-
ute to the goals of Biblical archaeology. Other than skull 901 AEH 66, the current
whereabouts of the human remains excavated by the AEH are unknown. In keeping
with archaeological practice in the Middle East at that time, there is a reasonably
good chance that they were reburied in an unmarked location off-site.
The AEH was sponsored by private and public donors, as well as numerous aca-
demic institutions, including Princeton Theological Seminary, University of
Southern California, Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, Virginia Theological
Seminary, University of Vermont, Trinity University, and Baldwin Wallace College
(Chadwick 1992, 24; Larue 1965). The reason for such extensive sponsorship can
be divined from Larue’s statement in his report on the first excavation season that
“Hebron’s importance in biblical literature is too well known to require more than
passing reference” (1965, 337). According to Poe, the expedition was “playing
against the tradition that [Hebron] was a very ancient religious center” during the
Middle Bronze Age, as mentioned in the Old Testament (2016, personal communi-
cation). Another goal of the archaeological work conducted by the AEH was to seek
evidence that would point to Hebron having been “the capital of an ancient Canaanite
kingdom” (Poe 2016, personal communication).
Evidence recovered by the AEH suggests that Hebron was first settled in the
Chalcolithic period. It became a regional power during the Middle Bronze Age, ca.
2000–1600 BCE, as indicated by a 9.1-meter-thick fortification wall built during
Middle Bronze II (Chadwick 1992, 56–57; Emek Shaveh 2014, 10). The AEH exca-
vated five tombs, including the one from which skull 901 AEH 66 was recovered.
Tomb Test 4, measuring up to five meters in width, was discovered in 1965 and held
the burials of eight people (Chadwick 1992, 32). Although it may have been used as
living quarters in the Chalcolithic period, it became a place of interment during
Middle Bronze Age II. The burials, which may have represented generations of one
family, occurred in two phases—phase VI (Middle Bronze I) and phase V (Middle
Bronze II, ca. 1750–1600 BCE)—with skull 901 AEH 66 belonging to the latter.
The assemblage of grave goods included over 170 items, such as bronze toggle pins,
one white limestone scarab with Hyksos style images, and various ceramic vessels
like bowls and storage jars (Chadwick 1992, 71–75). Chadwick’s (2005, 29)
description of the tomb’s contents is worth quoting at length for the connections he
draws to the Biblical narrative:
The most handsome find, however, was a large dagger with a wide blade and a tennis-
ball-sized limestone pommel into which a handle of wood had once been inserted. The
dagger lay next to the skeleton of an aged man who had been buried in a loose garment
fastened by one of the bronze toggle pins. The 10-inch bronze blade of the dagger had
turned green from time. It may well be similar to the knife envisioned by the Biblical
writer in the story of the binding of Isaac, when Abraham nearly sacrificed his son until
the Lord ordered him to desist. (Genesis 22:10)
Like Hammond (1967, 188) before him, Chadwick (1992, 71) associated this
“old adult with teeth well worn” with the phenomenon of Canaanite “warrior
burials.”
The “warrior burial” interment type is widely documented in the southern Levant
during the early second millennium BCE. Defined as the single burial of an adult
male with associated metal weaponry, they occurred most frequently from the end
of the Early Bronze Age through Middle Bronze I (Cohen 2012, 307). One of the
best known groups of “warrior burials” was excavated at the Middle Bronze I site of
Gesher. Here, each of seven burials contained a primary, single interment of a male
in a flexed position. With some slight variation, each was accompanied by a jar/jug
(that may have contained beer), a bowl, a bronze axe, and a bronze spearhead
(Garfinkel and Cohen 2007, 60–61). In terms of their significance, Cohen (2012,
310) writes that “the disposal of these weapons and their owners suggests a system
in which status and maintaining that status post-mortem held a greater significance
than keeping those weapons in use.” By contrast, the ubiquity of “warrior burials”
leads Kletter and Levi (2016, 23) to argue that they represent “male graves typical
of their period” rather than exceptional occurrences denoting unusual status,
achievement, or wealth.
The reduction in frequency of “warrior burials” from Middle Bronze I to II seems
to coincide with two factors: a shift from single burials in cave or pit tombs to shaft
tombs with multiple burials and a decline in the use of weapons as grave goods
(Cohen 2012; Kletter and Levi 2016). This decrease in weaponry within graves
from Middle Bronze I to the later parts of Middle Bronze II may be associated with
a newfound preference for luxury and identity-related objects, such as jewelry and
grave goods (Hallote 1994, 74–76). As the hand-to-hand combat weapons (axe,
spear, dagger) so common in “warrior burials” through the Middle Bronze I began
to disappear, burials of equids (horses/donkeys) near elite individuals suggest that
chariots (and, by extension, the composite bow) were becoming the prestige weap-
ons of choice in Middle Bronze II (Burke 2004, 55–92).
An apparently cursory examination of his skeletal remains, along with better-
documented mortuary contexts, has led archaeologists to identify the person to
whom skull 901 AEH 66 belongs as a “warrior burial.” However, his burial deviates
from this tradition: he was buried with seven other individuals and alongside weap-
ons more typical of an earlier era. Perhaps more importantly, the “warrior burial”
tradition may itself be a modern construct as artificial as the chronological and
geographic terminologies that archaeologists have imposed upon the “Middle
Bronze Age” “Near East.”
Becoming a Teaching Collection “Object”: Skull 901 AEH 66
After Tomb Test 4 and its male occupant were excavated, and their analysis used to
explicate a picture of Hebron in the Middle Bronze Age, his skull transitioned from
a contextualized subject of Canaan into an object used for decoration and osteologi-
cal research. After its excavation, the skull was stabilized with a solution of cellu-
lose cement and then painted with an acetone-thinned version of the same substance
(Poe 2009, personal communication). The Jordanian Department of Antiquities
gave permission for this skull, along with many artifacts recovered from the site, to
leave Hebron and enter the United States. They were transported in “wooden crates
that were probably four foot by four foot by four foot,” and then, “nailed shut and
shipped by boat to the U.S.” (Poe 2016, personal communication). Hammond was
one of Poe’s advisors during his graduate work at Brandeis University. The skull
was among a group of objects that Hammond gave to Poe for his instructional use
in 1970. Poe is uncertain whether Hammond was aware that this was one of the
skulls from the burial cave, as opposed to one from the Byzantine period cemetery
that had also been unearthed (Poe 2016, personal communication).
Upon Poe’s hiring by SSU’s History Department, the “warrior” skull was stored
in his office, alternately being kept inside of a metal cabinet or displayed on a book-
shelf with a dead rose in his teeth, “just something to amuse people who [came]
through the office” (Poe 2016, personal communication). Such storage and display
of the skull was also due to the fact that Dr. Poe had no intention of using the skull
for research purposes. This eventually led to Poe donating the skull to Boutin and
the SSU Anthropology Department upon her hiring in 2009, because of her back-
ground both in the archaeology of the Near East and in human skeletal remains, in
hopes that she could bring them to bear on the skull (Poe 2016, personal communi-
cation). When asked what type of knowledge he would like to gain from skull 901
AEH 66, Dr. Poe discussed the possibility of DNA research, noting that there is a
dearth of information “about the population genetics of what we call Canaanites”
(Poe 2016, personal communication; cf. Brody and King 2013). Although DNA
testing has not been financially feasible up to this point, such input from a stake-
holder highlights how oral history can be used to guide and strengthen bioarchaeo-
logical research.
The skull’s fragile condition prohibits its handling during lab practicals, but it
can serve as a valuable teaching tool in classes such as Human Osteology,
Bioarchaeology, and Archaeology, and the Bible for topics including cranial and
dental anatomy, paleopathology, and life in Middle Bronze Age Canaan. Before this
could occur, though, the skull was subjected to osteological analysis. Following
standards provided by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994), osteological data collection
from skull 901 AEH 66 was completed. This process encompassed cranial and den-
tal inventory, sex and age estimation, and recording of cranial and dental
pathologies.
Cranial inventory reveals that the majority of the skull is present (Fig. 11.2).
Noticeable portions of the right and left zygomatic arches, occipital bone, and left
mastoid portion of the temporal bone are missing. Smaller portions are missing of
the left parietal and bones of the medial eye orbits. Most of these can be identified
as postmortem breaks based on their differentiating color. Attempts at repair are
evidenced by tape and glue residue on these surfaces. Residue on the occlusal sur-
faces of some of the dentition indicates attempts to glue the mandible to the cra-
nium. No polishing, which might suggest repeated handling, was observed. Factors
that may have contributed to the current state of preservation of skull 901 AEH 66
include conservation techniques (e.g., cellulose nitrate, or “Duco” cement, is no
longer recommended for conservation of archaeological materials; Hamilton 1999),
Fig. 11.2 Skull 901 AEH 66, with Bill Poe (left) and Madison Long (right) (Photo by Alexis
T. Boutin)
travel to the United States, and display in an academic office and storage in cabinets
not designed for the curation of human remains. The skull’s cranial morphology is
that of a probable male. Decision tree analysis, based on a sample of various
ancestral origins (Stevenson et al. 2009), confirms this high probability at 88%.
Ectocranial suture closure, in which all vault sites were obliterated, suggests that the
age of death was 50+ years; thus, he falls within the age class of old adult.
Dental inventory recorded the presence of 19 teeth (12 maxillary, 7 mandibular).
The missing teeth can be explained by a combination of postmortem loss (four man-
dibular incisors), antemortem loss (three mandibular molars), and, potentially,
hereditary absence (two maxillary lateral incisors and four third molars). This per-
son seems to exhibit maxillary lateral incisor agenesis. This anomaly has been asso-
ciated with increased chance of transposition of maxillary canines (Celikoglu et al.
2012), offering a potential explanation for the adjacent position of this person’s
maxillary canines and central incisors, as well as the distal rotation of the left maxil-
lary first premolar. Furthermore, maxillary lateral incisor agenesis has been found
to correlate with the hereditary absence of other permanent teeth, particularly the
third molars (Garib et al. 2009, 732.e4). This can possibly account for the skull’s
missing third molars, although confirmation via radiography is needed.
The teeth that are extant and undamaged exhibit attrition ranging from moderate
(mandibular canines and premolars) to heavy (maxillary premolars and molars) to
extreme (maxillary central incisors and canines). The crowns of the anterior maxil-
lary teeth are worn nearly down to the root, with wear heaviest on the lingual aspect.
Horizontal bone loss is widespread in both the maxillary and mandibular arcades,
causing the exposure of cancellous bone and the rounding of the alveolar margin.
Although periodontal disease is a likely culprit, another factor may have been con-
tinuing eruption to compensate for reduction in crown height due to attrition and
advancing age (Clarke and Hirsch 1991; Hillson 1996). No linear enamel hypopla-
sias were observed, and only two caries could be confirmed (both on the distal
interproximal aspect of the left second maxillary molar). In terms of cranial pathol-
ogies, no evidence of trauma is present, although healed cribra orbitalia lesions of
medium severity (Stuart-Macadam 1985) are visible in both eye orbits.
These findings confirm the archaeologists’ original assumption that this person
was “aged” or elderly, but their confidence in declaring him a “man” may have been
somewhat unwarranted. Moreover, there is no antemortem or perimortem cranial
trauma (indicating interpersonal violence) to support archaeologists’ identification
of him as a “warrior.” We do not know how the archaeologists arrived at these con-
clusions, that is, whether they were informed by basic knowledge of human sexual
dimorphism and aging as exhibited by the skeleton or by the associated grave goods
that accompanied the deceased to the afterlife. Their lack of attention to the social
construction of embodied aspects of personhood, such as sex, gender, and age—as
was common for that era—can be stated with greater certainty.
Theorizing Subjects and Objects
Next, we provide a brief review of how the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity
have been applied by (bio)archaeologists in theory and practice. American tradi-
tions of archaeology and biological anthropology were founded on the concept of
human skeletal remains (which almost always derive from socially marginalized
populations) as objects of study (Starn 2004; Thomas 2000). This construct was
challenged by indigenous groups’ social justice movements in the 1970s and 1980s,
culminating in the United States in the 1990 passage of NAGPRA. Although ini-
tially met with reluctance and, occasionally, resistance by bioarchaeologists and
anthropologists, NAGPRA has since become an accepted and even productive
aspect of the discipline (Martin et al. 2013, 23–50). Nevertheless, objectification of
human remains continues when they are understood through traditional osteological
analyses, which are based on essentialized axes of identity such as age, sex, ances-
try, and health (Geller 2017). Human remains are often used to address bioarchae-
ologists’ research questions in objectifying ways: they “serve a conception of a
distant past that is filled with population migrations, cultural transitions, disease and
skeletal trauma histories, and other features that tell the past in physical anthropo-
logical terms” (Kakaliouras 2012, 217).
One of the most cogent critiques of archaeologists’ tendency to essentialize their
subjects comes from Smith (2004). He writes:
by establishing sex, class and ethnicity as foundational axes of identity, we construct
archaeological analysis as a tautology whereby the discovery of historical modes of consti-
tuting subjects is in fact already given by the overly burdensome theoretical apparatus. The
current configuration of the essential archaeological subject in Anglo-American theory thus

takes as given what should be the heart of any analysis and in so doing reinscribes the
essential archaeological subject. (2004, 10–11)
Thus, the highly crystallized social matrix that (bio)archaeologists rely upon for
discerning identity is both tautological and ahistorical. In the case of skull 901 AEH
66, the excavation from a Middle Bronze Age Canaanite site, the identification of
his remains as those of an elderly man, and their association with a large bronze
dagger permitted his affiliation with the “warrior burial” category constructed by
archaeologists for the temporal and political entity that they recognize as Middle
Bronze Age Canaan.
Joyce (2004, 86) likewise criticizes “categorical conceptualizations of identity”
(e.g., an archaeology of gender, an archaeology of agency) as “objects of study” for
archaeologists. Her primary concern is that they ignore the dynamic, embodied
nature of human experience. As a corrective, she calls for an archaeology of embod-
ied subjectivity that draws on phenomenological and feminist theories and which
emphasizes the agency of past subjects within socio-historically specific contexts
(Joyce 2004). In a similar vein, Kakaliouras (2012, S213) explains that Native
Americans, among other social groups, “conceive of human skeletal remains as
ancestors or simply as people.” Human remains and sacred cultural belongings can
be understood as active subjects in the present. Subjectivity can also be produced
via the relationships between anthropologists and descendant communities as they
collaborate to repatriate human remains. Her call to regard “repatriable” human
remains as subjects (Kakaliouras 2012, S218) offers a promising take on how sub-
jectivity can be embodied in the remains of past persons.
Still, the language that bioarchaeologists employ to describe, analyze, and inter-
pret evidence has been slow to change. A passage from a 2005 article entitled “The
Ethics of Bioarchaeology” illustrates this well:
The traditional perspective of scientists who study ancient remains has been to consider
human remains as valuable objects full of research potential. Many descendants of the
people whose remains bioarchaeologists study, in contrast, view ancestral remains as
objects of veneration that should be protected from what they see as the indignity of exami-
nation by scientists whose motivations they consider suspect at best and immoral at worst.
(Larsen and Walker 2005, 111; emphasis added).
Although sensitivity to descendants’ rights and beliefs is clear, the language used
implies a regard for human remains as things rather than as people—as objects
rather than subjects. More recent treatments of bioarchaeological ethics are much
more careful to recognize the personhood of past subjects. For example, Turner and
Andrushko (2011, 44) distinguish between human “remains and cultural objects,”
while Larsen now frames them as “once-living groups now represented by skeletal
remains” (2015, 428). Also encouraging is the emphasis by these authors on the
reciprocal benefits of bioarchaeologists collaborating with stakeholder groups,
whether or not it is compelled by law.
Despite some encouraging shifts in linguistic framing, the way that bioarchae-
ologists write about their research perpetuates an implicit denial of subjectivity to
past peoples. Human remains in skeletal collections continue to be objectified

through language: “a collection gains importance to physical anthropologists as it
becomes more thoroughly understood through the work that is ‘done on it’”
(Kakaliouras 2014, 218). Bioarchaeologists traditionally describe their findings in
the third-person passive voice, which can be construed at best, as the remains hav-
ing been analyzed by some unnamed but supremely objective scientific hand, or at
worst, as the remains having analyzed themselves. This failure to assert an authorial
presence exemplifies bioarchaeologists’ traditional reluctance to address the ways
in which their work may be politicized; “unfortunately, the spaces left by resolute
scientific neutrality are often quickly filled by glosses or misrepresentations”
(Kakaliouras 2008, 46). As a corrective, Kakaliouras (2014, 219) asks, “What might
we gain by regarding collections of human remains as repositories of multiple sto-
ries, not just the ones we have been taught to tell about the bones”?
In response, we offer the bioarchaeology of personhood model (Boutin 2011,
2016). It encompasses five tenets (Boutin 2016, 18), of which the most germane will
be detailed here. A bioarchaeology of personhood explores how the ostensibly dis-
tinct axes of identity recognized by Smith (2004) are in fact inherently relational
and embedded within one another as the skeletal body transforms from in utero to
after death. The materiality of the human body can be drawn upon to interrogate the
supposed naturalness of these foundational categories of identity. But while the
body is material, it is also plastic (continually growing, remodeling, changing, and
being changed), so the life course model is another important premise. Alternative
modes of interpretation that acknowledge transformations of embodied personhood
across the life course, such as fictive osteobiographical narrative, are encouraged.
More than simply “stories,” these narratives emphasize the contextuality that is fun-
damental to bioarchaeological research, in which data from human remains are
interpreted vis-à-vis their mortuary contexts. For bioarchaeologists, this means that
we must not only acknowledge that osteological categories of identity (sex, health,
kinship, etc.) intersect as people age but also that they can only be understood within
their specific socio-historic contexts. Thus, an awareness of past and present trends
in anthropological praxis, and an attendance to the language we use to analyze and
interpret human remains in their archaeological contexts, may provide new ways of
transcending subject-object divides like the one experienced by skull 901 AEH 66.
Re-subjectifying the Skull Through Teaching
We conclude by offering teaching strategies that explore how (bio)archaeological

practices transform past people into objects and propose ways of restoring their
subjectivity, using skull 901 AEH 66 as a case study. Beyond simply describing the
specific geographic, temporal, and social contexts in which a person lived, instruc-
tors can use human remains in teaching collections to illustrate the historical trajec-
tories of anthropological research and acknowledge its political dimensions. They
can also introduce nontraditional forms of interpretation and best practices, such as
stakeholder collaboration, that can help students engage meaningfully and respect-
fully with what may otherwise seem to be simply a skull on a shelf. These methods
can be implemented in a variety of collegiate anthropology courses, including bio-
logical and medical anthropology, bioarchaeology and archaeology, and any courses
with a regional focus.
Skull 901 AEH 66 serves as an apt entry into trends in the archaeology of the
ancient Near East. The AEH’s original interest in pursuing excavation at Tell er-
Rumeide exemplifies traditional Biblical archaeology, with its emphasis on demon-
strating the historiocity of, and reconstructing cultural contexts for, narratives of the
Old and New Testaments (and contemporary texts) through archaeological material
culture and chronology (Cline 2009; Levy 2010). As was typical of archaeological
practice in the Near East at that time (Porter and Boutin 2014), the contents of Tomb
Test 4 were valued for the chronological insights they provided and the object-
focused interpretations of past social life they permitted. Partage, in which the find-
ings of archaeological excavations were divided between the host country and the
foreign institution sponsoring the project (often to the advantage of imperialist
Western powers; Kersel 2015, 48), made possible the export of artifacts and human
remains from Hebron to the United States.
Like in many parts of the Middle East, archaeological findings from Hebron have
been invoked to assert dominion over contested land. From the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury through the Second World War, Western powers (e.g., the United States, United
Kingdom, Germany, Austria) used archaeological surveys and excavations in what
is now Israel and the Palestinian territories to their strategic geopolitical advantage
(Cline 2009). After the foundation of Israel in 1948, many archaeological projects
were conducted to create and reinforce a nationalistic narrative (Killebrew 2010).
The Cave of the Patriarchs (Cave of Machpelah/Ibrahimi Mosque) can be cited as
an example of a Jewish “pilgrimage tomb” that was identified on Palestinian land as
a way to appropriate heritage (Scham 2010). Believed to be the burial place of
Biblical figures Abraham and Sarah, the enduring importance of the Cave of the
Patriarchs and its surroundings in Hebron is indicated by modern controversy and
instances of violence between groups of Muslim and Jewish peoples. In 1929, Arab
violence aimed at the Jewish community of Hebron resulted in 67 deaths—an event
that is now conveyed through pictures at a museum in the city. More recently, the
1994 rampage of Baruch Goldstein—an Israeli Jew who murdered 29 Palestinian
Muslim men and boys who were worshipping within the Cave of the Patriarchs
itself—has pushed Hebron’s Muslim and Jewish residents even farther apart
(Marcus 2000, 42).
Archaeological work at Tell er-Rumeide/Tel Rumeida has occurred against a
backdrop of the city of Hebron changing hands between Jordan, Israel, and the
Palestinian Authority. The AEH took place when Hebron was located in Jordan; the
expedition was cut short by the 6-Day War of 1967, when this territory was ceded
to Israel. Hebron reverted mostly to Palestinian control in 1997 and now lies within
the West Bank of the Palestinian territories (although this land is designated by its
Biblical name, “Judea and Samaria,” by some members of the Israeli government).
The archaeological site is located at the western edge of a Jewish settlement (also
named Tel Rumeida), although many homes of Palestinians also occupy the mound
itself (Emek Shaveh 2014, 5). Excavations sponsored by Israel institutions have
occurred there several times since the AEH, with the most recent (in 2014) aimed at
creating an archaeological park (Eisenberg and Ben-Shlomo 2016). The archaeo-
logical park would focus tourism efforts on artifacts and features associated with the
Middle Bronze Age/“Patriarchal Age” of the city (Emek Shaveh 2014, 14), arguably
in an attempt to legitimate the Jewish settlement. One publication of these recent
excavations cites finds from the Late Hellenistic to Early Byzantine periods (or, as
the authors call it, the Second Temple period) to identify it as a “settlement [that]
was predominantly Jewish” (Farhi and Ben-Shlomo 2016, 258). Another describes
a seal and ostracon from the Iron Age IIB-C, in which the paleography is interpreted
as typical of “First Temple period” Judah, and the personal names find parallels in
the Bible and other Hebrew texts (Vainstub and Ben-Shlomo 2016). No human
remains have been reported from these excavations: if any were to be found, only
the basic analysis could be conducted (e.g., age and sex assessment, cranial mea-
surements, and nonmetric data collection) prior to politically mandated reburial
(Nagar 2011). These examples at Hebron illustrate how archaeological research has
been used by Israel to assert claims to contested land while causing Palestinians to
be “alienated from the country’s cultural heritage as a whole” (Yahya 2010, 147).
Skull 901 AEH 66 also helps reinforce the argument that more meaningful and
relevant research can result when bioarchaeologists collaborate with stakeholder
groups (Boutin et al. 2017). Based on the current location of the “warrior” skull in
California, and given ongoing controversy over ownership of Hebron’s cultural pat-
rimony, the stakeholder with whom we could most feasibly consult was Poe, the
person who participated in the excavation that recovered the remains, maintained
control of the skull after it left Jordan, and donated it to Boutin and the SSU
Anthropology Department’s teaching collection. Long’s oral history interview with
Poe revealed insights that are difficult to glean otherwise, such as details about the
day-to-day workings of the excavation. For example, the colonialist legacy of
Biblical Archaeology can be seen in Poe’s description of the inherent differentials
in responsibility and authority between local workers and Western supervisors on-
site. Paying local workers for heavy manual labor, under the supervision of American
and European academics and professionals, was a typical model for archaeological
fieldwork in the twentieth-century southern Levant (as it continues to be in many
parts of the world) (Starzmann 2012).
Stakeholder collaboration is especially important when bioarchaeologists con-
duct research on human remains curated in skeletal collections. Kakaliouras (2014,
22) calls for “accounts of collections that attend more closely to their histories—
and perhaps even the histories of relationships between specific collections and
descendant communities who have cared about them or for them.” Collections of
human remains, she continues, have the potential to be “dynamic sites for the inter-
pretation and display of complicated pasts.” Indeed, members of diverse stakeholder
groups should be consulted during (and ideally prior to) the research process: this
includes relevant descendant communities as well as people who have been involved
in the excavation, curation, and interpretation of the collection (e.g., local historical
societies, academic researchers, museum professionals, cultural resources manage-

ment archaeologists; Voss 2012). To be clear, however, many ethical issues exist
surrounding how artifacts and human remains from archaeological excavations
have made their way into institutional collections. The argument that we present in
this chapter should not be construed as encouraging collusion with those who have
knowingly purchased looted materials. Rather, we call on bioarchaeologists to con-
sult with the people who stewarded them on their journey after they had already
legally become part of a collection.
Poe’s participation enhanced our ability to track the shift from contextualized
archaeological subject (“warrior burial”) to decontextualized osteological object
(skull 901 AEH 66). The last step in this process, re-subjectification into a Canaanite
man, can occur once the skull is accessioned into the teaching collection and SSU
anthropology students attempt to interpret it via fictive osteobiographical narrative.
This writing assignment (summarized below; the full version can be downloaded
from Boutin’s Academia.edu page) asks students to explore how intersecting aspects
of the skeletal subject’s personhood were experienced across his life course. While
evidence from mortuary archaeology may best be understood as representing per-
sonhood at the time of death and a society’s beliefs about the afterlife, osteological
evidence can suggest experiences from earlier stages of the life course (e.g., health,
diet, place of residence). Experiences and lifeways can be “fleshed out” by drawing
upon evidence from the person’s society (e.g., archaeological, textual, iconographic)
and/or analogues from living peoples (e.g., ethnographic, clinical). Every behav-
ioral and life course inference made in the narrative should be based on extant oste-
ological and/or archaeological data interpreted within the broader context of the
population, time, and place to which the subject belonged. Behavioral and life
course inferences must be annotated with an endnote that describes, and cites the
source of, the supporting evidence.
Due to the incomplete nature of the archaeological record, and depending upon
skeletal preservation, fictive osteobiographical narratives are always partial inter-
pretations that represent only one of many ways to tell a skeletal subject’s story. In
the case of the “warrior” from Hebron, students will undoubtedly produce a variety
of complementary, and perhaps competing, stories based on his skull. Their tellings
will depend on which aspects of his personhood (e.g., masculinity, advancing age,
poor dental health) they focus upon in the context of Middle Bronze Age Canaan.
But all of them will require the students to acknowledge the subjectivity of the per-
son whose skull is now curated on a shelf in our classroom.
Conclusion
As the only extant human remains from ancient Hebron, it is important that the story
of skull 901 AEH 66 be explored fully and via as many lines of evidence as possible.
In addition to conducting an oral history interview with an individual who was pres-
ent during excavation and later participated in his curation, bioarchaeological
methods were employed to learn about the life of the person to whom the skull
belonged. Without the beneficial information gained from speaking with Dr. Poe, a
large knowledge gap would exist between the excavation of the skull in 1960s
Hebron and his appearance in a classroom at SSU decades later. The filling of this
gap has not only aided in understanding how this skull came to be at the university
but also in the re-contextualization of the remains by helping to shape this person’s
unique story as it has continued even after death.
Based on our research, an image of the person to whom skull 901 AEH 66
belongs has started to appear. This person was likely a male who lived during the
Middle Bronze Age II to the age of at least 50 years. His life experiences resulted in
cribra orbitalia, heavy dental attrition, and the loss of multiple teeth antemortem.
After death, this man was interred in a burial cave among the remains of other
people to whom he may have been related. The cave, which would come to be
known as Tomb Test 4, was then excavated in the mid-twentieth century by the
AEH. The post-excavation journey of this person began with travel from the Middle
East to the United States, where his skull would experience time at SSU in a profes-
sor’s office, on a bookshelf, and eventually in a cabinet in an anthropology
classroom.
In the preceding pages, this chapter has explored, through the case study of skull
901 AEH 66 from Hebron, how archaeological and osteological methods permit the
construction of both subjects and objects when human remains are excavated, ana-
lyzed, interpreted, and curated. A critical application of bioarchaeological methods,
paired with those from oral history, has paved the way for skull 901 AEH 66 to
become a unique part of the SSU Anthropology Department’s teaching collection.
Unlike the other decontextualized human remains that comprise it, this skull can tell
a story—with chapters spanning the second millennium BCE to twenty-first-century
CE, written by professors, students, and stakeholders—about past mistakes and
future potentialities in anthropological praxis.
Acknowledgments We thank Bill Poe for generously sharing his perspective on the excavation
and curation of skull 901 AEH 66. We are also grateful to Pamela Stone for inviting us to partici-
pate in this volume. Some of the ideas about subjects and objects were initially presented by
Boutin in a paper at the TAG conference at Stanford University in 2009, in a workshop entitled
Subjects and Objects in Near Eastern Archaeology, organized by Benjamin W. Porter and Stephanie
Langin-Hooper. Boutin is also grateful to Ann Kakaliouras for many years of conversation about
bioarchaeological praxis. Finally, we thank this anonymous Canaanite man for allowing us to tell
part of his story.
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Chapter 12
Conclusion: Challenging the Narrative
Kenneth C. Nystrom
Contents
xpanding the Umbrella of Bioarchaeology
E 232
Engaging with Anatomical Collections 235
References 239
Bioarchaeology is a relatively young field, beginning in the mid-1970s through the

merging of physical anthropology and processual archaeology (Buikstra 1977). The
field has expanded and diversified rapidly, and presently we seem to be in what
Rakita (2014, 218) characterizes as the “full flush of young adulthood.” There has
been quite a bit of “taking stock,” and we seem increasingly interested in where we
came from and our major influences (Armelagos 2003; Buikstra 2006; Knüsel 2010;
Zuckerman and Armelagos 2011) and even tracing our academic genealogies Barr
et al. 2017 (http://www.physanthphylogeny.org/). The field seems particularly ener-
gized, with new synthetic treatises (Buikstra and Beck 2006; Larsen 2015; Martin
et al. 2013) and the launching of a dedicated journal (Baker and Agarwal 2017).
Within this growth, there is also an emerging critical self-awareness (Kakaliouras
2014; Watkins 2017; Zuckerman et al. 2014) as well as a sense of seeking – explor-
ing the boundaries of bioarchaeological research (Agarwal and Glencross 2011;
Baker and Agarwal 2017; Zuckerman and Martin 2016). It is here that I see the main
contributions to this volume.
In some ways, writing this chapter has been a challenge. The volume is unique in
that there is no overarching unifying topic (e.g., colonization, childhood) or regional
or temporal focus (e.g., East Asia, pre-Columbian Caribbean). Contributions range
K.C. Nystrom (*)

Department of Anthropology, Wooster Hall 319, State University of New York at New Paltz,
New Paltz, NY, USA
e-mail: nystromk@newpaltz.edu

232 K.C. Nystrom
in time from the prehistoric Southwest United States, the Middle Bronze Age of the
Near East, to the early twentieth century. Authors are variously quantifying residen-
tial segregation, questioning diagnostic criteria in paleopathology, reevaluating the
role of women in the past, or examining the impact of social inequality on health.
Several authors focus their attention on medical and anatomical collections, while
the remaining work with archaeological collections.
Yet there are connections that crosscut this variability. The central theme of this
volume is how bioarchaeologists are influencing the nature of the discipline by chal-
lenging narratives that have influenced our research. As used here, narrative refers
to how bioarchaeological thinking and research design have been structured regard-
ing particular research topics or what has been considered as falling within the “bio-
archaeological” purview. These narratives influence the type of research questions
we ask, their interpretation, the manner in which they are communicated, or even
what may be considered appropriate samples for bioarchaeological investigation.
The contributions to this volume challenge these narratives by asking new questions
(e.g., the role and social position of women [Owsley et al., Harrod and Stone], the
collection of fetal remains, and its relationship to structural violence [Muller and
Butler]), offering new interpretations (e.g., Stone) and new approaches (e.g., Long
and Boutin) and bringing the bioarchaeological gaze to bear on old, non-
archaeological collections (e.g., Zimmer, Lans). So, while there is no single topic,
region, or time that unites these contributions, the volume highlights how bioarchae-
ology is expanding and diversifying as researchers seek “new ways of knowing.”
Expanding the Umbrella of Bioarchaeology
I would assume that, despite the diversity of approaches within our discipline, when
asked how to define bioarchaeology, most researchers would answer that it is the
contextualized analysis of archaeological human remains. There are two aspects of
this definition that contributions to this volume challenge and that I wish to high-
light: its emphasis on archaeological remains and what exactly what it means to
contextualize our analyses.
Contextualization and a Critical Bioarchaeology
What does a “contextualized” analysis consist of in bioarchaeology? I generally

frame this to my students as the incorporation of historical, sociopolitical, environ-
mental/ecological, and archaeological data into the development of research ques-
tions. These questions are then interpreted within a body of social theory. We can
extend the concept of contextualization to include the coupling of research ques-
tions and skeletal analyses to modern social issues and engagement with descendent
communities.
12 Conclusion: Challenging the Narrative 233
One characteristic that Martin and colleagues (2013, 2) identify as central to

bioarchaeological research is that it should be engaged, “pursuing some larger goal
of value to a broader group including non-academics.” As an academic discipline in
which the focus of research may be thousand-year-old skeletons, the hardest part in
fulfilling this goal of engagement may be in overcoming the sense that our research
is indeed academic and lacking relevance. The question of how we can make bioar-
chaeological research more accessible to non-academics while also establishing a
connection between the past and some present “goal of value” is challenging but not
insurmountable, as demonstrated by several contributions to this volume (see also
the forthcoming volume Bioarchaeologists Speak Out edited by Jane Buikstra). Our
research is connected to issues facing contemporary society including the impact of
climate change, racialization, and social marginalization on human health. In this, I
see convergence between biocultural bioarchaeology and critical medical anthro-
pology in terms of scope and research perspective.
With a “commitment to embedding culture in historical delineated political-
economic contexts,” the goal of critical medical anthropology is “to extend the real-
ization of the relevance of culture to issues of power, control, resistance, and
defiance associated with health, illness, and healing” (Singer 2004, 25–26). Critical
medical anthropology is explicitly and “consciously political” as health is a political
issue and intimately tied to one’s position in terms of power and economy (Singer
1995, 81). Moving beyond the academy, critical medical anthropologists seek to use
the tools of anthropology to more effectively engage with the public (e.g., Hansen
et al. 2013) and influence clinical practice (e.g., Bourgois et al. 2017). Taken a page
from critical medical anthropology, is there a way to encourage a more engaged,
explicitly political, critical bioarchaeology?
It is fairly common to encounter bioarchaeological research that establishes the
biological consequences of social stratification. Differences in social status, be it
based on gender, race, age, or socioeconomics, can result in differential access to
food and proper nutrition (Ambrose et al. 2003; Le Huray and Schutkowski 2005),
increased exposure to disease (Cucina and Tiesler 2003; Jankauskas 2003) and
trauma (Lessa and Mendonça de Souza 2004), and physical activity and labor
demands (Andrushko et al. 2006; Klaus et al. 2009). Yet, it is less common to take
that next step, linking past and present inequalities with the intent (implied or
explicit) of addressing a broader “goal of value.”
One contribution that explicitly expresses a critical bioarchaeology is Rebecca
Gowland’s discussion of socioeconomic inequality and childhood health. Gowland
begins with the statement “Health is a matter of social justice” and explicitly connects
the results of her research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century childhood health to
the impact of modern governmental policies and child poverty in the United Kingdom.
Linking Boudieu’s concept of habitus, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic
inheritance, Gowland’s contribution is a powerful statement on how the bodies of the
poor (or the migrant worker; Holmes 2007) are viewed and used by a society.
Whereas Gowland’s contribution focuses on the health consequences of poverty,
Adam Zimmer discusses the connections between socioeconomic class, residential
segregation, and the risk of being resurrected and dissected. Zimmer’s focus is on
234 K.C. Nystrom
the cadaver collection practices that led to the formation of the George S. Huntington
Anatomical Collection. Articulated as a form of violence and social control, Zimmer
argues that the bodies collected by resurrectionists and anatomists were redefined
and reduced from a biosocial individual to a purely biological specimen (a transition
that is also discussed in the work of Lans and Long and Boutin, this volume). This
definitional violence is reinforced in that Zimmer found that black neighborhoods
were impacted regardless of socioeconomics. That is, he found that while the resur-
rectionists differentiated between poor and rich white neighborhoods (avoiding the
latter), residents’ in black neighborhoods were aggregated, reduced to simply
“Negro” by grave robbers, anatomists, and museum curators.
How can we connect the focus of Zimmer’s research to broader “goals of values”?
At one level, the neighborhood effects framework can be linked to health disparities
associated with urban poverty and segregation (e.g., Houston et al. 2004; McMichael
2000; Singer 1994). Further, although Zimmer demonstrated that class was not the only
factor influencing which bodies were “resurrected” for dissection, the historical connec-
tion between poverty and dissection is well documented (e.g., Halperin 2007; Humphrey
1973; Richardson 1987). With the passage of anatomy laws that made it legal for medi-
cal schools to take and dissect unclaimed bodies from public institutions such as alms
or poorhouses, the poor became more vulnerable to this type of inequality.
At first blush, this may seem quite removed from any present “goal of value” as
dissection began to lose some of its social stigma and as body bequeathing became
more common during the mid-twentieth century (Garment et al. 2007). Though less
common today, the unclaimed bodies of the poor and marginalized are still used to
teach gross anatomy, which Jones and Whitaker (2012) have characterized as a
form of exploitation. While these authors are referring to the use of such bodies by
medical schools, as should be abundantly clear from several contributions to this
volume, bioanthropology also needs to consider how it engages with the docu-
mented skeletal collections that have been a central feature in the growth and devel-
opment of our discipline.
Communicating Bioarchaeology
How we as a discipline engage with and communicate to a wider, nonacademic audi-

ence is an increasingly visible, and pertinent, issue. In a recent paper, Stojanowski
and Duncan (2014) looked at web-based science news aggregators as a means of
evaluating the impact and public visibility of bioarchaeological research. They found
that topics like “Vikings,” “mummies,” “natural curiosities,” and “disease” account
for the majority of bioarchaeological research that the public encounters, while much
of what we might deem as significant (e.g., violence, social inequality) does not pen-
etrate. One of their suggestions for how to more effectively communicate with the
public is “to more fully embrace humanistic approaches” (Stojanowski and Duncan
2014, 7). This concern regarding the relationship between academic research and
public communication and perception is paralleled in critical medical anthropology.
A special issue of Social Science & Medicine edited by Helena Hansen and colleagues
(2013, 116) explores “how ethnographic research can uniquely contribute to public
perception and policy surrounding health issues.” The power of ethnography is that
it conveys in narrative style the experiences of individuals, thus fostering a connec-
tion, and hopefully, a deeper understanding of another’s lived experiences.
Osteobiographies represent one manifestation of how bioarchaeology has
attempted a more humanistic, experiential approach to communicating research.
Commonly associated with an analytic focus on a single individual, researchers use
these “micro”-level data as a basis for “expanding the analytical and interpretive
scale from the grave outward to understand this person’s context in life and in death”
(Stodder and Palkovich 2012, 1). In her contribution, Aja Lans uses this approach as
she reconstructs the life and death experiences of a single individual, known as
Lizzie, from the Huntington Collection. Lans’ contribution reflects the influence of
several trends in bioarchaeology. First, it approaches an anatomical collection from
a contextualized framework, which will be discussed further below. She considers
how the body may be appropriated and transformed from subject to object and how
they may retain agency postmortem. This builds on scholarship which acknowl-
edges that death is not necessarily the end of social life and that life course analyses
must also consider postmortem experiences (e.g., Buikstra et al. 2011; Hallam et al.
1999). Lastly, the critical, self-reflective nature of Lans’ discussion as she questions
her own relationship and interaction with Lizzie’s remains is notable. This imparts
a more subjective, humanistic tone to her narrative.
Madison Long and Alexis Boutin also discuss how human remains are trans-
formed from subject to object and back again. They document the path that a single
skull from the Middle Bronze Age has taken from archaeological object to office
decoration to teaching specimen. The authors use this as a vehicle for their broader
argument concerning how bioarchaeologists are perpetuating the objectification of
individuals based on how we envision “collections” and the language we use to
communicate (Kakaliouras 2014), a point that I will return to below.
Engaging with Anatomical Collections
It is probably safe to say that everyone who considers themselves as working under
the umbrella of biological anthropology within the United States is familiar with the
Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection and the Hamann-Todd Osteological
Collection. Similar, though perhaps not as widely known, are the W. Montague
Cobb Human Skeletal Collection and the George S. Huntington Anatomical
Collection. These types of collections are central in our discipline. They were, and
continue to be, used in establishing basic methodologies used to generate demo-
graphic data (e.g., Albanese et al. 2008; Galera et al. 1998; Hefner 2009; Seidemann
et al. 1998), establishing pathological diagnostic criteria (Zuckerman 2017), and as
comparative samples in numerous studies. Although these documented collections
have been intensively studied, they have also been overlooked in many ways.
236 K.C. Nystrom
Building upon recent work (e.g., de la Cova 2012; Watkins and Muller 2015; Muller
et al. 2017; Pearlstein 2015), five chapters in this volume offer a new perspective on
these collections. This reflects a new and significant trend in our discipline, and I
will highlight two aspects that I see as particularly important. First, these collections
are beginning to be scrutinized in the same manner as archaeological collections.
That is, the processes and social context that led to their acquisition and develop-
ment are now being considered analogous to the processes that form the archaeo-
logical record and archaeological skeletal collections. Therefore, questions are
being asked within a problem-orientated biocultural research design, incorporating
social theory and historical and archaeological data. The other aspect of this trend is
that it requires the field to take a critical look at itself and how we may engage with
these collections.
A Bioarchaeology of Anatomy Collections
There is an implicit bias toward human remains that have been excavated in our
discipline. In his discussion of how the contextual record is reconstructed, Larsen
(2015, 422) emphasizes “excavation,” “archaeological sites,” and bodies that have
been “interred.” Several authors (Buikstra et al. 2011; Goldstein 2006; Knüsel 2010;
Martin et al. 2013) have noted how pivotal mortuary archaeology (the archaeology
of funerary/burial contexts) was for the development of modern bioarchaeology. If
archaeologists uncovered dozens of infant burials in jars from a prehistoric context
or encountered skeletons bearing marks of postmortem modification, this would no
doubt lead to discussions about how society viewed the social presence of newborns
(e.g., Stefanović and Borić 2008), social organization and paleoeconomy (e.g.,
Haverkort and Lubell 1999), mortuary behavior (e.g., Frayer et al. 2006), and the
formation of social identity (Nystrom 2011). Yet, this is the type of evidence found
in large documented skeletal collections like the George S. Huntington, the
W. Montague Cobb Human Skeletal Collection, and the Johns Hopkins Fetal
Collection. As Muller and Butler argue in their contribution “museums, laborato-
ries, and university classrooms” should be considered as mortuary spaces and thus
should be problematized in the same way as other skeletal collections.
These large documented collections (as well as other archaeologically recovered
skeletal material that exhibit evidence of “anatomical” processing) result from the
retention of skeletal remains associated with dissection and medical training.
Although not interred, buried, or processed in the traditional mortuary archaeology
sense of those terms, these bodies were nonetheless acquired within a sociohistorical
context (Muller et al. 2017; Watkins 2007), processed (Hunt and Albanese 2005),
interacted with (Hodge et al. 2017), disposed of (Crist et al. 2017; Hodge 2013), and
stored – all elements that constitute their mortuary context. How different is this
from how mortuary archaeology reconstructs contexts (e.g., Buikstra and Nystrom
2015; Weiss-Krejci 2001)? This then serves as the foundation for the contextualized
analysis of these collections, and we can begin to consider more m acroscale cultural
issues surrounding the manner in which they were collected and the political and
economic structures that facilitated their formation. Acknowledgment of these

processes informs on interpretation of data derived from these remains (e.g., de la
Cova 2012; Muller 2006; Watkins 2012; Zuckerman 2017) while also necessitating
discussing how our field continues to engage and utilize these bodies today.
In his discussion of the process through which bodies were entered into the col-
lection that bears his name, Robert J. Terry (1940, 435) noted that he had difficulty
collecting some anthropometric data because the “…bodies commonly bear the
marks of undernourishment and in many cases of the wasting effects of chronic ail-
ment that brought death.” This quote would seem to suggest some awareness, some
acknowledgment, of the biosocial context and how it may manifest on the body.
This is the foundation of Molly Zuckerman’s contribution – that our understanding
of the biosocial context in which these people lived and died has to inform on our
interpretations of skeletal data derived from their bones. By taking a broader per-
spective, we can acknowledge the “embodied synergistic effects of chronic or
repeated stress and malnutrition over the life course on immune function, and con-
sequent vulnerability to disease” (Zuckerman 2017).
The bioarchaeology of children is, ironically, still in its infancy. Research trends
in this area have focused on diet and paleopathology and are increasingly embedded
in a life course interpretive framework and the contextualized understanding of the
“plurality…and fluidity of identity” (Mays et al. 2017, 42). Although in their contri-
bution, Jennifer Muller and Margaret Butler discuss how the concept and identity of
“fetus” was constructed; the main focus is on how the plurality/fluidity of an embod-
ied identity – the intersection of gender, race, and poverty – fostered a context in
which poor black women and their offspring were subjected to a form of violence.
Connecting back to how bioarchaeologists may link their research to a “larger goal
of value,” the authors connect the processes behind the formation of this skeletal
collection and the continued structural vulnerability of the poor and blacks in the
United States (Farmer 2000; Washington 2006).
The contributions from Lans and Zimmer also connect to the establishment of
biomedical authority and power over bodies of the social marginalized. Both recon-
struct the social context in which the George S. Huntington collection was developed
as it provides the foundation for addressing broader cultural issues. Zimmer discusses
racialization and how black bodies were stripped of flesh and biographies, violently
redefined as an aggregate “Negro.” Lans considers the manner in which identity is
“mutually constituted in these inter-corporeal relationships” – how both researcher
and specimen are transformed by their interaction. These are not common perspec-
tives for bioarchaeology, and bioanthropology more broadly, as it engages with race.
Self-reflection
In some way all of the contributions to this volume, not just those that are discussing
anatomical collections, are challenging us to more critically evaluate the narratives
that structure our research and our own position relative to the people we study.
These can be difficult issues to face (e.g., “am I reinforcing a hegemonic, patriarchal
238 K.C. Nystrom
framework in how I teach about the evolution of bipedalism, pelvic shape, and
obstetrics?” “Is my research perpetuating violence initiated hundreds of years
ago?”) and address because they run counter to the “objective science” narrative
that is at the heart of our discipline. It also means acknowledging that while I myself
may not be a racist misogynist, these narratives are so deeply ingrained that they are
part of the invisible structure of the discipline.
The contributions from Pamela Stone, Ryan Harrod, and Doug Owsley and col-
leagues collectively help destabilize the white, male, and Western biocentric per-
spective (see Watkins 2017) as they confront the narrative of the passive, weak
female. The chapters by Stone and Harrod and Stone outline how this narrative was
constructed and reinforced by biomedicine and anthropology, how it was retroac-
tively applied to our early hominin past, and how it continues to influence bioar-
chaeological research today. Stone argues that we must move beyond equating the
death of “reproductive age” females as a failure of biology and consider the biocul-
tural context of pregnancy and birth. Harrod and Stone’s analysis also stresses the
importance of a biocultural approach as they document the many roles that women
occupied in the “Chaco Phenomenon” of the American Southwest. Owsley and col-
leagues document how one eighteenth-century woman exerted agency within a
patriarchal society.
Several contributions address structural violence in their discussion of anatomi-
cal and medical skeletal collections. Muller and Butler refer to the acquisition of
fetal specimens from poor black women; Zimmer identifies a definitional violence
in how skulls of blacks were labeled and cataloged; Gowland discusses how socio-
economic inequality became/becomes embodied. The challenge here is that
researchers need to be cognizant of their position as researchers relative to the indi-
viduals they are studying (Zuckerman et al. 2014). When we start to reconstruct the
social and cultural context in which the large documented anatomical collections
were developed, we are looking at the context of our own discipline, thus exposing
the structural inequalities and violence that facilitated its formation. We must there-
fore also interrogate how our discipline continues to engage with these collections
and how this reflects a continuation of that inequality.
As noted by Rachel Watkins in her chapter, this is a general admonition; and
thus she offers a look at how the structure and the violence manifest in bioar-
chaeology. Just as research on anatomical and medical skeletal collections has
not been contextualized in the same manner as archaeological collections, the
status and availability of individuals in medical and anatomical collections as
“research subjects” are seldom questioned and are generally not conceived of as
being “repatriatable” (Kakaliouras 2012). The message that this fosters is that
people of color are more appropriately considered research subjects rather than
as researchers themselves – a fundamental inequality that limits the full engage-
ment of people of color as knowledge producers (Watkins 2017). We cannot let
our focus on reconstructing the impact of inequalities in the past blind us to
inequalities we may be perpetuating or that may be structuring the nature and
makeup of our field.
Parting Thoughts
As our discipline transitions through this “young adulthood,” it is important to both

assess where we came from and where we might be headed. The contributions to
this volume challenge received wisdom on a number of different fronts – the role
and position of women in the past, how we communicate our results, our engage-
ment with political/social issues, the nature of the relationship between researcher
and research subject/object, and the structural inequality in the discipline itself. By
highlighting how these received narratives have structured our thinking and our
discipline, the ideas expressed by the contributors to this volume point toward new
ways of engaging with, and new ways of knowing, the past. They reflect develop-
ments that will have significant repercussions for the representativeness, relevancy,
and health of our field and will encourage a bioarchaeology that is a more “intel-
lectually rigorous and liberatory practice” (Watkins 2017).
Acknowledgments I thank Pamela Stone for inviting me to contribute to this volume and to the
authors for their thought-provoking work – it is a special privilege to have the opportunity to com-
ment on work authored by people I respect and whose work I find inspirational.
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Index
A leaders, 205, 206

American expedition to Hebron (AEH) mothers, 203
excavation unit, 215 obstetric data, 166
human remains, 215 foragers, 197
Middle Bronze Age II, 213 isotopes data, 206
sponsorship, 217 populations, 173
Tomb Test 4, 217 ANOVA tests, 59
warrior burial, 218 Anthropology, 66, 167, 168
American hypersegregation, 63 Archaeological park, 225
American Southwest collections, 195, 196 Archaeological subjects
Anatomical collections AEH, 215
African, 32 cranial inventory, 219
and archaeological record, 236 cranial pathologies, 221
biocentricity, 29, 30 dental inventory, 220
biosocial context, 237 human remains, 215
decolonizing generation, 29 osteological analysis, 219
diagnostic criteria, 89 storage and display, 219
documented biological profiles, 90 Army Medical Museum (AMM), 73, 84, 192
infant burials, 236
intellectual and political work, 32
life histories, 90 B
medicine and science, history, 3 Behavioral and life course, 226
plurality/fluidity, 237 Biblical archaeology, 217, 224, 225
racialization, 28, 237 Bioapatite analysis, 129
skeletal remains, 236 Bioarchaeology, 198, 199
social theory, 27 definition, 4
syphilitic diagnostic lesions, 6 ethics, 222
in USA, 33 investigations, 174
WWII, 97 personhood model, 223
Ancestral Pueblo social historical, 4
agriculturalists, 197 The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy
DNA analysis, 206 in the United States, 2
females Biocentricity, 29, 30, 33
agricultural role, 197 Biocultural approach, 65, 173, 178, 180, 199,
captives, 205 238
laborers, 203, 204 Biodemography, 98

and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71114-0
244 Index
Biographical details, 64 dental disease, 121

Biomedicine, 182 3D model, spine, 126
Bipedalism, 170, 182 fungal infection, 123
Black Mesa, 201, 202 periostitis, 123, 124
Body politic, 72 ribs, 125
Bone formation, 124, 151, 154 spina bifida, 125
Bone Rooms, 2 sub-crypt, 121
Bone samples, 129 thoracic vertebra, 124
Brick burial vault, 112 mitochondrial DNA, 132, 133, 135, 136
location, 118 nursing chairs, 135
sub-crypt, 116 occupants, 114
West family burial vault, 118 skeletal data
Byssinosis, 154 lingering illness, 134
tedious illness, 134
skeletal remains, 114
C stable isotopes, 129, 131
Cadavers, 50, 51, 54, 64, 66 sub-crypt, 116, 134, 137
Canaanite warrior, 213 Death Index, 55
Captives, 205 Decolonizing generation, 29
Caries sicca, 94, 95 Definitional violence, 64
Categorical conceptualizations of identity, 222 Delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH), 91, 92,
Chaco Canyon, 199 99
Chaco Phenomenon, 200 Demography and pathology, 119, 120
Childbirth, 169–171, 183, 184 Dental disease, 121
Child labour, 150, 151 Dental inventory and pathology, 122, 220
Children, 149, 152, 155, 156 Dialectical model, 50
Chronic stress, 98–100, 102 Diet, 152
Condition of the Working Classes in England, Dissection
156 black bodies, 53
Contextualization, 227, 232–234 body donation, 52
Copley vault, 117, 118 collections, 53
Crania Americana, 194 grave robbing, 52
Cranial inventory, 219 Huntington’s collection, 51
Craniometric analysis, 78, 207 Dissimilarity values, 58, 60
Critical bioarchaeology, 232–234 DTH, see Delayed-type hypersensitivity
Cultural values, 81 (DTH)
D E
Darnall’s Chance Ectocranial suture closure, 220
brick burial vault, 116 Eighteenth-century family structure, 134, 136,
eighteenth-century 137
ceramics, 114 Eighteenth-century funerary rituals, 138
family structure, 136, 137 Eighteenth-century women’s roles, 135, 139,
funerary rituals, 138 140
women’s roles, 136, 138–140 childless widows, 139
genetic evidence, 134 economic independence, 139
heavy metals, 128, 129 femes covert, 138
house and burial vault, 112 household, 136, 139
human remains marriage, 140
bones, 121, 124 unmarried women, 135, 138
chemical testing, 120–121 widow, 138
chronic and debilitating illnesses, 123 Embryo collectors, 81
Index 245
Enlightenment, 96 Morphological Museum, 13, 22

Ethical issues, 226 osteological series, 13
Ethnicity, 82 race and gender, 22, 23
Ethnobiology, 203 tuberculosis, 18
Ethnographic research, 179 Hypersexualization, 20
F I
Fetal and infant collection Immunopathobiology, 102
embryos and fetuses, 72, 73 Index of dissimilarity, 57
pregnancy, 82 Indigenous human remains, 192, 194, 195
scientific value, 80, 81 Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry
sociopolitical value (ICP-MS), 129
craniometric analysis, 78, 79 Industrial diseases, 157
legal statutes, 80 Industrial revolution
mortuary treatments, 77 children, 149
personality traits, 79 factory labour, 156
skull, 79 poor diet, 156
specimens, 79, 80 working hours, 159
specimen, 72 Inequality, 232–234, 238, 239
Fewston church, 154 Infectious disease, 90
First Temple period, 225 Inflammation, 92, 101
Interaction index, 57
Interdepartmental Committee on Physical
G Deterioration, 149
Gender inequality, 168, 173, 180–182 Intersectionality, 72
Gender theory, 192, 207 Isolation index, 58
Geocoding, 56
Geographic Information System (GIS), 53, 55
Global South, 182 J
Goal of value, 234 Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection, 74–76, 83
Grave robbing, 52
Great American City, 49
Great Brick Chapel, 117 K
Kin Bineola, 200
H
Health inequalities, 148, 158 L
Heavy metals, 128–130 Laborers, 171, 203, 204
Hebron, 217–219, 224, 226 La Plata, 202
Historical and social profiling, 30 Leaders, 205, 206
History of medicine, 13, 16 LEH, see Linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH)
History of science, 72 Life course epidemiology, 98
Human evolution, 169 Linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH), 100
Human skeletal remains, 221
Human skeletal transcript, 5
Human skeleton database, 121 M
Humoral/antibody-mediated immune Malnutrition, 99, 102
response, 91 Marginalisation, 157
Huntington collection Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning
categories, 54 Commission (M-NCPPC), 111
dissections, 51 Maternal health, 172–174
evidence of tuberculosis, 22 Maternal mortality, 180, 183
human variation, 15, 16 Mayan reproductive management, 82
246 Index
Medical anatomical collections isolation index, 61

age-based variation, 96 mapping materials, 55
dry bone pathological specimens, 96 tract income level, 56
DTH, 99 white residents, 62
HIV, 100 Nursing chairs, 135
LEH, 100
PEM, 99
poverty criteria, 96, 98 O
pox, 96 Objectivity, 221
resurrection, 97 Obstetrical dilemma
Medical education, 16 birth deaths, 172
Middle Bronze Age, 232 evolutionary framework, 170
Mitochondrial DNA, 132, 133 fragile states, 170
Mitotyping Technologies extracted lithotomy position, 172
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), 132, pelvic structure, 171
133, 135 Victorian, 170, 171
M-NCPPC-Archaeology Program, 115 Occupational and reproductive stress, 178,
Montague Cobb, W. collection 179, 181, 196, 203
biological anthropology, 35 Odonatological collection, 151
4Cs database, 36 OpenStreetMap base map, 56
and documents, 38 Oral history, 213, 214, 225, 227
ethnicity and class markers, 34 Osteobiographies, 235
poorhouse samples, 37 Osteological analysis, 133, 134
students training, 35, 36 Osteological collection
trauma, 37 AMM, 192
Mortuary contextualization, 84 persons, 5
Mother Health International (MHI), 182 racial classification, 192
Mothers, 203 violent death, 195
Multidisciplinary, 43 Osteological subject, 32, 38, 39
Multistate modeling, 103
P
N Paleopathology
Narrative, 232 analysis, 134, 152
National health issues, 148 diagnostic criteria, 102
National Museum of Health and Medicine Pauper apprentices, 152–155, 158
(NMHM), 73 PEM, see Protein energy malnutrition (PEM)
National Museum of Natural History Periosteal reactions, 94
(NMNH), 13 Personhood, 17, 18, 20
Native American Graves Protection and Phosphorus ingestion, 151
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), 33, Phossy jaw and matchmaking, 150–152, 158
214, 221 Pilgrimage tomb, 224
Native Americans and Blacks, 32 Polygenism, 168, 171
Natural inequalities, 169 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 133
Neighborhood effects, 50 Poor Laws, 148
New ways of knowing, 2–4 Postmortem
New York City, 12, 14, 23 interventions, 12
black neighborhoods, 64 lives, 12
black residents, 61, 62 Pott’s disease, 18, 125–127
Death Index, 55 Poverty, 84, 86, 96, 98, 147, 149, 155, 156,
dissimilarity index, 59 158, 159, 234
dissimilarity values, 61 Pox, 96
income levels, 62 Pregnancy-related deaths, 172
interaction index, 59 Pregnancy risk, 174, 176
Index 247
Protein energy malnutrition (PEM), 99 Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century burial

Public communication, 234, 235 vaults, 117
Pueblo Bonito, 200, 207 Sex
Puerperal sepsis, 172 determination, 198
differences, 193, 202
and gender, 3, 165, 195
Q theory, 168
Queteletic approach, 66 Skeletal analysis, 1, 2
ethnographic analogies, 4
gender theory, 3
R principles, 66
Racial formation, 64, 65 racism, 3
Racial residential segregation, 56 social science methodologies, 3
Racial typologies, 74, 78, 79 syphilis, 6
Racism, 3, 20, 31, 54, 65, 72, 73, 79, 82, 98, Skeletal frailty index (SFI), 103
237 Skeletal transcript, 198
Reproductive-aged deaths, 6 Skull, 76, 79
Reproductive female body Skull 901 AEH 66, 219, 222
anthropology and medicine, 166, 167 archaeological and osteological methods,
bioarchaeological investigations, 170, 174 227
biological determinism, 169 Biblical archaeology, 224
bipedal pelvis, 166 stakeholder groups, 225
cephalopelvic relationship, 166 Tomb Test 4, 224
human evolution, 169 Social age, 77
maternal morbidity and mortality, 167 Social class, 157
nineteenth century, 168 Social identities and values, 72, 82, 166
obstetrical death, 166 Social inequalities, 20
occupational stress, 181 Social justice, 148, 233
pelvic metric data, 166 Social reform, 158
physical sex differences, 167 Social status, 17
polygenetic view, 168 Social theory, 27, 28
race and sex, 168 Socioeconomic status-based differences, 102
risky childbirth, 184 Specimens, 72
two-sex model, 167 Stable isotope, 129–131, 155
Resurrection men, 97 Staphylococcus aureus, 123
Rural to urban migrants, 156 Stigmatising effect, 152
Structural violence, 5, 30, 31, 37, 38, 42, 83,
85, 86, 98, 149, 182, 232, 238
S Subjectivity, 214, 222, 223
Scientific knowledge, 40, 41 Syphilis
Scientific value, 80, 81 animal models, 91
Segregation diagnostic criteria, 6
Death Index, 55 sensitivity and specificity, 93
demographic data, 55 skeletal manifestations, 94
dissimilarity value, 60 DTH, 91, 102
geocoding, 56 evidence-based diagnostic criteria, 101
indices gummata, 101
black communities score, 57 immunological status, 101
demographic values, 57 prevalence, 103
dissimilarity value, 57 primary stage, 91, 92
interaction index, 57, 58 secondary stage, 92
isolation index, 58 stages, 91
OpenStreetMap base map, 56 tertiary stage, 92, 101
racialization, 54 T lymphocytes, 92
Self-identified descendant community, 33 Treponema pallidum, 91, 92
248 Index
T V
Tedious illness, 134 Victorian, 148, 149, 157, 159, 160, 170, 171
Terry, R.J. collection, 97, 98 Violence, 238
Tomb Test 4, 213 Violent death, 195
Tooth samples, 129
Treponema pallidum, 91, 92
Treponematoses, 100 W
Tuberculosis, 18, 20, 21, 120, 123, 125, 126, “Warrior burial”, 218
140 West family burial vault, 118
White and Negro pelves, 171
Working classes, 157–159
U
Urban poverty, 49
X
X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), 129

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Bioarchaeology and Social Theory

Series Editor: Debra L. Martin

Bioarchaeology and Social Theory

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962329

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

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This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

which individuals were “deemed suitable” for medical or museum collections.

Part I Anatomical (Medical) Collections

Part II Archaeological Collections

Kathryn G. Barca Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural

Rachel Watkins Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington,

Pamela K. Stone is the director of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research-­

P.K. Stone (*)

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 1

New Ways of Knowing

subjects” noting that this form of unquestioned production of scientific knowledge

Why a Bioarchaeology Lens?

As evidenced here, bioarchaeologists are in a unique position to develop rich inter-

criteria to reveal new ways to examine skeletal remains in archaeological contexts.

the analysis of archaeological collections. Her examination of the diagnostic criteria

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 11

The Huntington Collection is now described as representing over 3600 European

It should not be surprising that a man like Huntington became such an

Medicine, Dissection, and Bodies: A Necessary Bond

Case Study: Lizzie’s Extended Life Course

Hallam (2010) goes on to challenge the notion of medical detachment when

(Re)Articulating Huntington and His Collection

Skeletal studies of anatomical collections are foundational to the scientific concep-

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 27

of systems of power and oppression within biological anthropology. Specifically,

c­ ommunity also participated in decision making regarding laboratory practices, as

The W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection

Recent Studies of the Cobb Skeletal Collection

Anatomical Remains and Osteological Subject Making

 natomical Remains as the Raw Material of Scientific

Exploring this relationship would provide a means for a self-reflexive examina-

A.N. Zimmer (*)

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 49

Dr. George S. Huntington (1861–1927), a physician and professor of anatomy at

 easuring Residential Segregation in the Huntington

Table 4.1 Mapping materials used and their sources

One-way ANOVAs for statistically significant differences between group means of

statistically significant differences between group means of the number of white

Index of Dissimilarity for the City of New York

Interaction Index for the City of New York

Isolation Index for the City of New York

Effect of Tract Dissimilarity Value on the Number of Black

 ffect of Tract Interaction Values for Black Residents

 ffect of Tract Isolation Values for Black Residents

 ffect of Tract Income on the Number of Black Individuals

 ffect of Tract Income on the Number of White Individuals

formation refers to the dialectical relationship by which sociocultural, political, and

There is a significant relationship between bioarchaeological research and skeletal

J.L. Muller (*)

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 71

Bioarchaeology and Fetal and Infant Collection

The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection

Vertical angle Horizontal angle

Fig. 5.1 Fetal measurements of the external nose (Schultz 1920)

Fig. 5.2 Skull remains of Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection #91

The Sociopolitical Value of Fetal and Infant Remains

The biocultural paradigm has informed much of bioarchaeological research in

order to provide enhanced understanding of the embodiment of social processes and

Pamela K. Stone is the director of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research-

New Ways of Knowing

Why a Bioarchaeology Lens?

Medicine, Dissection, and Bodies: A Necessary Bond

Case Study: Lizzie’s Extended Life Course

(Re)Articulating Huntington and His Collection

c ommunity also participated in decision making regarding laboratory practices, as

The W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection

Recent Studies of the Cobb Skeletal Collection

Anatomical Remains and Osteological Subject Making

natomical Remains as the Raw Material of Scientific

easuring Residential Segregation in the Huntington

Index of Dissimilarity for the City of New York

Interaction Index for the City of New York

Isolation Index for the City of New York

ffect of Tract Interaction Values for Black Residents

ffect of Tract Isolation Values for Black Residents

ffect of Tract Income on the Number of Black Individuals

ffect of Tract Income on the Number of White Individuals

Bioarchaeology and Fetal and Infant Collection

The Johns Hopkins Fetal Collection

The Sociopolitical Value of Fetal and Infant Remains

Capturing the “Normal” Fetus: Collection and Commodification

Fetal and Infant Value Beyond Scientific Contributions

The Axes of Gender, Poverty, and Race

Diagnostic Criteria for Syphilis

Medical Anatomical Skeletal Collections

he Embodied Effects of Poverty, Low Socioeconomic Status,

The Burial Vault

Other Historical Burial Vault Studies

The Human Remains

Case Study 1: Phossy Jaw and Matchmaking

Case Study 2: Pauper Apprentices – North Yorkshire

Discussion: Industrialised Bodies

p atterns of stress for reproductive-aged females as well as other factors outside of

Anthropology, Medicine, and Framing Difference

From Womb to Tomb?

The Obstetrical Dilemma

Skeletal Analysis: Measuring the Risk of Pregnancy?

Occupational and Reproductive Stress

nderstanding Task Differentiation Through Ethnoarchaeology

Maternal Mortality in the Past

Gender Inequality, Not Reproduction